Lennox case update. Defence lawyers have made legal arguments to appeal judge. will have to wait to see what happens. Sorry I've not been around, hope to be fully back in the swing soon.

   

Statement on Lennox by Sarah Fisher

It has been brought to my attention that a small clip of my assessment of Lennox has been put on the

internet. This clip has been taken completely out of context and whilst I have remained relatively

quiet on this case since I spoke in court, I feel that I am now forced to make a statement to clarify

what actually happened during the time I was with Lennox.

Wrongly or rightly many documents and details about this case have been passed onto different

parties. I do not feel it is appropriate for me at this moment to discuss in detail everything that has

been said to me, nor to put forward my own ideas regarding all the statements made, as everyone is

entitled to their own opinion and beliefs. What I am qualified to do however is to discuss behaviour.

My assessments, statements and videos of those assessments have been accepted in other court cases

at Magistrates, County and Crown Courts here in the UK so the field of assessment in cases such as

this is not unknown to me.

I do not care if I am to be criticized by members of the public or even other professional bodies as I

have a wealth of experience handling and working with many breeds of dogs, large and small and I

also work with horses with behavioural issues so do not need to defend the claims that I have little or

no experience of working with powerful animals such as Pit Bull Types. I would however like to

clarify that a Pit Bull Type is often a mix of dogs. Nothing extraordinary happens to the psyche of a

dog when it conforms to certain measurements.

I do care however that Lennox is being portrayed in a poor light through this video clip as my

experience of handling Lennox was thoroughly enjoyable and I now feel the need to explain in greater

detail the truth, as I see it, about my assessment. I know that Victoria Stilwell has been what I would

consider to be a sane voice amidst the madness that surrounds this case and she has seen full video

footage of the assessments carried out by myself and David Ryan plus other documentation.

When the door to the van was first opened Lennox barked. He barked at me three times when I

approached. As I said in my report this is not uncommon behaviour in any dog that is in a confined

situation in a crate, kennel or in a car. He was also shaking like a leaf but this does not come over in

the video that my assistant took of this assessment. He was clearly frightened as he could not have

known what was going to happen to him and again this is not an uncommon behaviour in the dogs

that come to me for help. No one has ever disputed that Lennox can be anxious around some strangers

but I believe the key word some has sadly been overlooked.

I asked for someone that Lennox knew to take him out of the crate to keep his stress levels low. Entry

and exit points can be a source of conflict for any dog. I was told I had to handle Lennox on my own

for the entire assessment and that he had bitten the last person that came to see him. This is the clip

that has been released. Had I had any concerns for my safety or those around me given that I was to

be fully and wholly responsible for a dog that I do not know and that I had been told has bitten, I

would not have continued with the assessment if I believed that dog to be a danger either to myself or

those who were standing in the car park. Lennox gave me a lot of information about his temperament

whilst in the crate. In court however, and therefore under oath, Ms Lightfoot the Dog Warden stated

that in fact Lennox had not bitten anyone so I have to assume on the evidence placed before the court

that the statement made to me at the start of my assessment was untrue. Given the publicity

surrounding this case I am also confident that had Lennox actually bitten anyone whilst in the care of

his family as has been suggested someone would have come forward by now.

I spent approx 15 minutes with Lennox prior to being taken from the crate, working with a clicker and

some treats to see if, even in the environment that was causing him some anxiety, he could still learn

and take direction from a stranger. He could. His eyes were soft and he was friendly. At this point I

would also like to clarify the meaning of the word friendly. It does not mean confident. Was Lennox

anxious? Yes. Hostile? No.

I believe that Lennox would have been totally at ease had I indeed taken him out myself but I also

believe I have a duty of care to reduce stress where possible when handling any animal in a situation

that is causing them distress. No doubt this statement will also be taken out of context by those who

wish to discredit me and to discredit my belief that Lennox is not a danger to the public based on my

experience with him and also based on the video assessment carried out by David Ryan which I have

also seen.

I use food in an assessment to monitor the dogs stress levels and emotions at all times. It is not a

bribe. A habitually aggressive dog will generally seek out conflict in my experience but even these

dogs can often be rehabilitated. No amount of food can disguise this behaviour and giving food to a

dog with aggression issues can be extremely dangerous. The dog may be lured to a person by the

promise of food but once it has taken the food it may panic as the offering of the food has now

brought that dog into close proximity with the threat i.e. a stranger. I have worked with dogs with

aggression issues and whilst some may well take the food, the person delivering the food may not be

able to move once the food has gone as the movement of the person, even the smallest movement of

their arm, may trigger the dog to lunge and bite. I would not hand feed a dog that I deem to be

aggressive. The delivery of the treat must come from the person that the dog knows and trusts - not

the stranger. The dog can learn to approach a threat and then turn back to the person that the dog trusts

for the reward if the approach to the person is appropriate. I use food throughout an assessment to

monitor what is happening with the dog on an emotional and physical level not to make him my best

friend.

Lennox was so gentle with the taking of the food both in the crate and also later in the car park. He

was also appropriate in his behaviour with the games we played. He was also gentle when he jumped

up at me to see if he was allowed the food that I was withholding in my hand. When he realised it

wasn't forthcoming he politely backed off. This would suggest to me that he has been around a family.

Not chained up in a yard as has also been claimed by people who do not know the family or the dog.

Lennox showed excellent impulse control at all times and at no point did he grab me or my own

clothing which many dogs do when getting excited by a game. I have worked with some truly

challenging dogs and some will become increasingly aroused by lead ragging or games with toys and

start seriously mouthing or biting the handlers arms or clothing. This can quickly flip over to more

overt aggression and these dogs can be dangerous particularly if they are being handled by just one

person. It is imperative that dogs with this behaviour are taught a more appropriate way of interacting

with people and responding to the leash and also greater self control. There are many ways to help

dogs that have been encouraged, through mishandling and misunderstanding, to behave in such a

manner. Kicking and beating them is certainly not the answer.

Lennox does rag on the lead but it is very self controlled. He did not exhibit any of the behaviours that

I have mentioned above. Regardless of what some uneducated people may wish to think, it is possible

to glean a lot of information about a dog through games and food as many behaviour counsellors and

trainers will confirm.

I wrote a fifteen page report on my experience with Lennox and my thoughts about the David Ryan

assessment. In this report I state that I have concerns about the appearance of Lennox’s neck. In the

video I explain this too. His ears are unlevel and there was a change in the lay of his coat over the

Atlas in line with the nuchal ligament that is present between T1 and C2 vertebrae. Coat changes

often occur in dogs, cats and horses that have suffered injury or those that are unwell. I have studied

this over seventeen years of handling many animals. In all cases where I referred an animal back to a

vet, whether it was in the care of a shelter, owned by my private clients or students that I teach

changes to the soft tissue or skeleton were noted on further detailed investigation. When I see this

around the neck in a dog I know that it is likely to give the dog cause for concern when someone

unknown to that dog attempts to handle the collar or put on or take off a lead. Coat changes may well

be present where deep bruising has also occurred. Pain and pain memory is a key factor in many

behavioural problems.

Lennox was quite rightly put on Amitriptyline. I do not believe that the Council have failed in their

duty to care for Lennox when it comes to the stress that he has been under and I understand that this

drug is used to treat anxiety and depression. It was with interest, though, that I discovered that this

drug is also used to treat chronic pain in dogs. Again this was mentioned in my written report. This

may explain in part why my experience with Lennox seems to fly in the face of other evidence

presented before the courts. He was not on Amitriptyline when he was assessed by David Ryan.

I would absolutely move on to touch an animal all over its body in any assessment that I do. I may or

may not choose to muzzle a dog that is unknown to me to do this if I have concerns about the body

language that I have seen prior to this part of my assessment. I elected not to stroke Lennox all over

because of my concerns about his neck, the newly forming scabs that were present on his flanks and

the blood that was present around the nail beds around his right hind foot. This decision was made

based on the physical evidence before me not because I felt I would be in danger. I talked about this

in court which was open to the public and at the end of my assessment which is also on film I

explained this to a representative from the BCC Dog Warden team and asked if there was anything

else that she would like me to do with Lennox. She said no.

I cannot comment on what happened when Lennox was seized or measured by Peter Tallack because I

wasn't there. I can explain behaviour though and any frightened animal can be intimidating. I have

recently been in Romania working with traumatised horses and two stallions had not been mucked out

for months as the staff (men) were too scared to go in with them. They called them 'pitbulls' such is

the misguided impression of this type of dog. Hay had been simply thrown over the stable doors and

their water buckets were hanging crushed against the stable wall. I went in with them, not because I

have any desire to be a hero, but because I can read an animal well and within minutes they were

quiet, standing at the end of their stables albeit it pressed up against the walls. I was calm with them

and we took out all the filthy bedding and fetched new water buckets for them too. They didn't attack

anyone. They were simply terrified and they were not provoked. I spent time with one of them on my

own, hand feeding him and was finally able to touch his face. This process probably took less than

half an hour. I was totally absorbed in what I was doing and when I turned to walk out I realised that

one of the Romanian men had been watching me. He raised his eyebrows, gave me the thumbs up and

walked away. Other people could then go in with this magnificent horse too and hand feed him the

fresh sweet grass that we had picked from the surrounding fields so it isn’t simply that I am quiet in

my handling of animals nor possess some extraordinary skill that can make even the most savage lion

behave like a lamb when in my company.

I can perhaps, help an animal that is struggling, gain trust in human beings as many people can. I can

perhaps work with a difficult animal and make it look as though that animal is calm but all the time I

am reading that animal. Every second of the way. I am looking at the eyes if it is safe to do so, I am

watching the respiration, I am studying the movement, the set of the ears and the tail and so on and

my opinions about an animal are based on many years of working in this way. One case that will

always stand out in my mind was a large member of the Bull Breed family. I believe she was two

years old. I won’t go into the details here but I will say that when I worked with her she appeared to

be very good to the member of kennel staff that was watching. At the end of my assessment the

member of staff asked me what I thought. I sadly had to say that I thought the dog should be put to

sleep. The member of staff was horrified and I remember her saying ‘but she’s been so good with

you’. But I had noticed some worrying signs. The shelter ignored my advice and rehomed the dog

who savaged the new owner so badly the owner ended up in the ICU. Of course the dog was

immediately destroyed.

I knew what I was walking into when I agreed to go and assess Lennox for the family. To have to

defend Lennox outside of the court has, however, come as a surprise. I have made this statement to

shed a little more light on what is a distressing case for all those involved, knowing full well that I

will no doubt be subject to further scrutiny and criticism. So be it. I am not afraid. If nothing else this

case has highlighted some important issues about the fears and prejudice concerning dogs, their breed

types and their behaviour. Certainly it highlights the sad truth as Xenephon said so wisely in 400 BC.

Where knowledge ends, violence begins.

I believe the birds in this shot are Black Billed Magpies (Pica Hudsonia).

 

Shot in Denver CO.

 

From a morning of sitting on my patio and watching the birds. I find it's made for fantastic practice. Trying to get exposure right and an interesting shot with unpredictable moving subjects. It's a lot of fun!

© 2015 Alicia Clerencia Adanero. Todos los derechos reservados.

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

El Tinto a su paso por las Majadillas

 

"Dicen que soy como un libro sin argumento, que no se si vengo o voy, que me pierdo entre mis sueños" De: El Sueño de Morfeo

 

Arguments at the United States Supreme Court for Same-Sex Marriage on April 28, 2015

 

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Ted Eytan | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

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We stayed here in a holiday apartment here in Church Street, with our children about 35 years ago.

IPhone 8+ and processed in Snapseed.

 

Ba Jia Jiang (八家將) is originated from the Chinese folk beliefs and myths, usually referred to a few members of God, generally eight members. The general argument of the existence of Ba Jia Jiang is from the eight generals catching evil exorcism for Wufu Emperor (五福大帝). These eight generals are the gods of the underworld. They are also known as the bodyguards or attendants for the temples of the nether Gods such as Dongyue Emperor (東獄大帝), Yama (King of Hell, 閻羅王) and Cheng Huang (City Gods, 城隍). Gradually Ba Jia Jiang evolved into the pioneers of Wang Ye (Royal Lord, 王爺), Matsu (媽祖) and many other temples, as the bodyguards of the Gods. Later on, the participation of believers in the temples dressed up as Ba Jia Jiang in order to defend the Gods. These actions evolved into Taiwanese folk activities, which are part of the Wu Array (Military Array, 武陣) in Din Tao (Taiwanese troupes, 陣頭). Ba Jia Jiang is responsible for the capture of ghosts and evils, bringing safety and good lucks and providing protections. They contain a strong religious nature, and Din Tao (Taiwanese troupes, 陣頭) are often seem mysterious, threaten and serious.

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

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24th December 2022, Roermond, The Netherlands, visiting Marco @ Handmates

 

Hasselblad X2D 100C

Hasselblad XCD 38mm f2.5

I did not!

You did too!

 

I did not!

You did too

 

I did NOT!

Yes you did!

 

Take it back!

I will NOT!

 

I'm Telling!

Pants on fire!

 

Debating the possibility of a nice sunset.

 

Calpine Lookout. A U.S. Forest Service rental in Tahoe National Forest, California.

This "discussion" was incredibly loud and cacophonous.

Casa de los Azulejos

 

Vista de la fachada Sur (original) de la Casa de los azulejos, una de las más bellas obras civiles del barroco novohispano.La Casa de los Azulejos es un palacio ubicado en el centro histórico de la Ciudad de México, construido durante la época colonial. Es conocido por éste nombre debido a su cubierta de azulejos de talavera poblana que recubren completamente la fachada exterior del edificio, haciendo de esta obra una de las más bellas joyas del arte barroco novohispano.

 

Durante el periodo colonial fue la residencia principal de los Condes del Valle de Orizaba, cuyo aspecto actual, como hasta ahora se le conoce, fue ordenado por uno de sus descendientes. Fue habitado por la familia del Conde hasta recién consumada la Independencia de México, incluyendo hasta los primeros comienzos del Siglo XIX, cuando la propiedad es adquirida por varios personajes destacados hasta cambiar de uso residencial, que es cuando el inmueble llega a convertirse en la sede del conocido Jockey Club de México, y posteriormente y por un breve periodo en la Casa del Obrero Mundial. Actualmente es ocupada por una cadena conocida de restaurantes mexicanos. Hoy el edificio consituye uno de los principales símbolos de la ciudad, y así mismo, es uno de los principales puntos turísticos y de referencia de sus habitantes.

 

El edificio se encuentra ubicado entre las Calle Francisco I. Madero y la Calle Cinco de Mayo en el Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México.

 

Historia del edificio

Fachada Norte de La casa de los Azulejos, la cual fue realizada en el año de 1903 con la ampliación de la Calle Cinco de Mayo.Se sabe que el edificio original ya existía desde el siglo XVI, y que en realidad se encuentra conformado por la unión de dos casonas de las cuales, la que se ubicaba hacia el Sur, en un principio pertenecía junto a la llamada Plazuela de Guardiola a un señor de nombre Damián Martínez. Dichas propiedades se ubicaban, la ya mencionada en la transitada Calle de Plateros, exctamente frente al Convento de San Francisco el Grande de la Ciudad de México,[1] y la otra, del lado Norte, daba hacia el angosto Callejón de la Condesa. De la historia de la primera casa como ya se mencionó, siendo dueño Don Damián y viéndose en apuros económicos, se ven en la necesidad de vender ésta y plazuela anexa a otro señor de nombre Diego Suárez de Peredo en el año de 1596. Éste señor al enviudar, se retiró a la orden religiosa de los franciscanos quienes tenían ya para ese entonces el convento ubicado en la ciudad de Zacatecas, dejando así la propiedad en manos de su hija, quien se casó con el Segundo Conde del Valle de Orizaba de nombre Luis de Vivero.[2]

 

Don Luis era hijo del Primer Conde del Valle de Orizaba, Don Rodrigo de Vivero y Aberrucia, personaje destacado en el virreinato por su talento e instrucción, llegando a ocupar cargos importantes en el gobierno de la Nueva España, entre los que destaca el de Gobernador de la Nueva Vizcaya y el de Gobernador y Capitán General de las Islas Filipinas. Don Rodrigo hereda una de sus propiedades que se encontraba anexa a la casa a su hijo (que era la casa Norte), por lo que Don Luis fue el primero de los condes en habitar las casas, las cuales unió[3] y mandó a reparar, aunque no le dio el aspecto que actualmente posee el inmueble.

 

El aspecto actual del palacio se le debe entonces a Doña Graciana Suárez de Peredo, quien ostentaba el título de la Quinta Condesa del Valle de Orizaba,[4] quien vivió en la ciudad de Puebla desde su casamiento hasta la muerte de su esposo, en el año de 1708, cuando en ese año toma la decisión de regresar a la capital del Virreinato de la Nueva España y decide hacer uso del inmueble. Entonces, para el año de 1737, viendo la Condesa el estado de deterioro que tenía el palacio y otras propiedades que poseía en la ciudad, se ve en la necesidad de solicitar la reparación de todas éstas, especialmente en la que fija su residencia frente a la entonces Calle de Plateros, y para la cual desea embellecer no solo con el trabajo de la cantería, sino que ordena al arquitecto que la fachada del edificio sea totalmente recubierta con azulejos poblanos, cuya tarea fue encomendada al maestro Diego Durán. Éste no solamente lleva a cabo la labor solicitada, sino que realiza también los trabajos realizados en cantera labrada de los arcos, columnas, rodapies y cornisas de puertas y ventanas, así como de las balaustradas, resaltando aún más la belleza de los azulejos en el edificio.

 

Entrada del ejército Trigarante a México, de autor anónimo. A la derecha, la Casa de los Azulejos.Recién consumada la Independencia de México, para el 27 de septiembre del año de 1821, en que se realiza la entrada truinfal a la Ciudad de México en la todavía llamada Calle de San Francisco por parte del Ejército Trigarante al mando de Agustín de Iturbide, es levantado un arco del truinfo engalanado con flores, guirnaldas y alegorías pintadas en los soportes de dicho arco que representaban al nuevo gobierno, cuya hechura y detalles fueron elborados por artesanos de la ciudad. En ese momento se le hizo la entrega de las llaves doradas de la ciudad a Agustín de Iturbide por parte del Ayuntamiento. Tal memorable suceso fue plasmado en la acuarela titulada como la Entrada del ejército Trigarante a México, de autor anónimo. A la derecha de la obra, aparece la Casa de los Azulejos, cuyos balcones lucen engalados por terciopelos de color carmesí.[5]

 

Poco tiempo después, con la abdicación de Iturbide, los títulos Condales así como demás títulos nobiliarios que fueron otorgados por el Rey de España fueron suprimidos, por lo cual los escudos nobiliarios de las fachadas fueron borrados de los palacios y las casonas señoriales de México, y en el caso de la Casa de los Azulejos no es la excepción.

 

Uno de los sucesos que acontecieron en ésta casa y marcó una tragedia en sus habitantes, fue el asesinato del ex-Conde Andrés Diego Suárez de Peredo, descendiente de Don Rodrigo de Vivero a manos del Oficial Manuel Palacios, ocurrido al bajar las escaleras del patio del palacio. Tal crimen sucedió durante el motín de la Acordada, cuando se desató el saqueo en la ciudad. Los hechos refieren a una venganza por parte de Manuel Palacios en contra del ex-Conde, quien se oponía a que Palacios tuviera una relación formal con una joven de la familia. El Oficial, una vez encontrado culpable del crimen fue sentenciado a garrote vil,[6] ejecutándose frente a la llamada Plaza de Guardiola.

 

La casa continuó en manos de los descendientes del Conde hasta el año de 1871, que fue habitada por la última descendiente del título del Condado del Valle de orizaba, también en ese año se decide ponerla en venta, siendo adquirida por un abogado de apellido Martínez de la Torre, el cual fue el dueño de la propiedad tan solo por seis años debido a su muerte, por lo cual el palacio es puesto en venta de nuevo pasando a manos de la familia Yturbe Idaroff,[3] quienes fueron los últimos habitantes en darle un uso residencial al palacio.

 

Don Felipe de Yturbe y del Villar, deja la propiedad a su primogénito Don Francisco-Sergio de Yturbe e Idaroff, éste realiza los trabajos de readaptación del inmueble durante la apertura de la Calle Cinco de Mayo, por lo cual la parte Norte del edificio se reduce en unos veinte metros, y en el trabajo de sus respectivas fachadas se ordena cubrir con azulejos y labrado de cantera en las molduras de las ventanas, imitando el diseño original de la Calle Francisco I. Madero.

 

El palacio perteneció a la familia Yturbe hasta el año de 1878, pero todavía lo habitó hasta el año de 1881, cuando la ofrecieron en renta, pasando a formar la sede del Jockey Club de México, uno de los varios centros de reunión más exclusivos de la élite porfiriana, quien decidió ocupar tan imponente palacio en una de las avenidas más afrancesadas de la capital, que también comenzaba a transformarse. Este centro de reunión, y los famosos salones que fueron realizados dentro del inmueble, fueron inmortalizados en la obra de Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, y en uno de sus más conocidos poemas, titulado La duquesa Job, del cual se refiere uno de los fragmentos:

 

"...Desde las puertas de la Sorpresa

Hasta la esquina del Jockey Club,

No hay española, yanqui o francesa,

Ni mas bonita, ni más francesa.

Que la Duquesa del Duque Job..."

  

Mural titulado Omnisciencia" en la pared Norte de las escaleras del palacio, realizado por el pintor José Clemente Orozco.Durante la Revolución mexicana, en el año de 1915 se destina uno de los pisos del inmueble como la sede de la Casa del Obrero Mundial uso que se le dio por poco tiempo ya que Francisco Yturbe recuperó la propiedad a fin de no fuera dañada al darle dicho uso.[3]

 

Para el año de 1917 el palacio es rentado a los hermanos Walter y Frank Sanborn para establecer en este lugar una de las caferterías más concurridas de la ciudad en ese entonces, la cual se instaló originalmente en la calle de Filomeno Mata con un concepto inovador en la ciudad, el de una fuente de sodas y una farmacia, con el nombre de Sanborns American Pharmacy.[8] Se le realiza entonces al palacio una readecuación de casi 2 años para adaptarlo al concepto que intordujeron a México los hermanos Sanborn y le agregan aparte un restaurante, tienda de regalos y revistas, así como una tabaquería, haciendo que desde su inauguración en el año de 1919, se convirtiera en todo un éxito y, hasta finales del siglo XX fuera uno de los restaurantes y cafés más concurridos de la ciudad.

 

Entre las obras de arte que alberga el palacio en su interior, destacan el mural titulado "Omnisciencia" del pintor José Clemente Orozco, que abarca la pared Norte de las escaleras principales de acceso al segundo nivel; el mural fue solicitado por orden de su amigo y mecenas, Don Francisco-Sergio de Yturbe e Idaroff (quién fue uno de los grandes impulsores del muralismo mexicano de su época). Dicho mural muestra a una sacerdotisa arrodillada, y junto a ella se encuentran hombres alegóricos a la Voluntad y la Virtud.

 

Otro de los murales que sobresalen es el que se pintó en las paredes del primer nivel, y que corresponden a las paredes del patio principal, el cual lleva el título de Pavorreales, y a saber fue realizado por el artista húngaro Pacologue,[6] que se encontraba ex-profeso en Nueva York cuando se le informó del encargo solicitado, por parte de los Hermanos Sanborn.

 

Para el 9 de febrero de 1931 el edifico es declarado como monumento nacional de México.[9] Asegurando preservar el inmueble como una hermosa muestra del patrimonio de México.

 

Finalmente, en los años setentas el edificio fue adquirido por la cadena Sanborn's a la entonces dueña, la señora Corina de Yturbe.[3] por lo que se decide que el palacio recibiera una reestructuración, ya que el inmueble había sido dañado por los sismos y por el asentamiento de los edificios circundantes. En años pasados se logró restaurar en el segundo nivel el salón original del Jockey Club, rescatando sus colores originales.

 

Descripción del inmueble

 

Como se mencionó anteriormente, se sabe que la obra fue levantada en el siglo XVI y que se conforma por dos casas unificadas por acuerdo matrimonial. El aspecto actual de su fachada Sur y gran parte del patio interior, así como de la fachada de la capilla, se le debe al encargo de una de las descendientes del Conde del Valle de Orizaba, Doña Graciana Suárez de Peredo, Quinta Condesa, quien decide reparar la casa para poder habitarla, pero principalemte desea ver la fachada exterior del palacio cubierta de azulejos.

 

Se trata de una residencia señorial, que originalmente constaba de planta baja y dos niveles, con un amplio patio central, éste último modificado de su aspecto original por las adecuaciones del siglo XIX, y las que le fueron realizadas a cominezos del siglo XX para su uso actual.

 

La fachada principal, que da hacia la Calle Francisco I. Madero se compone de un enorme portón enmarcado por columnas y molduras trabajadas en cantera labrada con imitación de follaje, cuya pared se encuentra revestida de azulejos; dicho portón se encuentra rematado por un balcón, de dimensiones mayores a los laterales, cuyas columnas y molduras se encuentran trabajadas también en cantera, de igual forma con imitación de follaje; consta el balcón de un barandal de hierro forjado sujetado al remate en cantera de las columnas que enmarca el portón, y de igual forma las paredes se encuentran revestidas de azulejos. El remate del balcón lo conforma un nicho coronado por un pequeño frontón triangular, también trabajado en cantera con imitación de follaje, con roleos y molduras curvas a los lados que descansan en pinaculos que se encuentran realizados en talavera, el pretil que sirve como remate se haya cubierto por azulejos.

El interior a pesar de haber sufrido varias modificaciones para adaptarlo a variados usos, no es por tal motivo menos digno de admirarse. Destaca principalmente el gran patio central, de influencia mudéjar[10] que, como ya se hizo mención, fu adaptado para su uso como patio del restaurante, destacando sus esbeltas y grandes columnas estriadas intercalando un saliente de follaje trabajo en la cantera. Dichas columnas sostienen las vigas de madera de los corredores y columnas del segundo piso. Los corredores todavía conservan la reja original, de hierro forjado, que se dice procede de China.

Otro de los elementos que destaca es la escalera, de la cual los guardapolvos, tableros y lambrines se encuentran también recubiertos de azulejos, así como el techo de la misma, en la que destacan los azulejos entre las pesadas viguerías.

 

No menos dignos de atención, son los salones ubicados en el primer nivel, uno de ellos, el que corresponde al salón principal del Jockey Club, el cual fue restaurado, recobrando los trabajos de las molduras y yeserías tanto de las paredes como del techo. Así también, destaca el elevador, uno de los primeros en la ciudad.

 

Leyendas

Existe otra versión popular sobre la construcción de la 'Casa de los azulejos. Dicha conseja señala, según la versión de Luis González Obregón, que uno de los descendientes del Conde de orizaba, joven confiado en sus riquezas heredadas y dedicado en entrega al despilfarro y a la vida mundana, en lugar del trabajo y los negocios de la familia, fue en varias ocasiones severamente reprendido por su padre, el cual desesperado ante varias llamadas de atención solo le bastó con decirle al joven la siguiente frase:

 

"Hijo, así nunca llegarás lejos, ni harás casa de azulejos..."

 

Y parece que tal consejo acentó en la mente del joven heredero, quien cambió su modo de vida hacia uno más responsable, y para demostrar a su padre su madurez y esfuerzo, reparó y levantó la propiedad recubriendo la fachada completa en azulejos.

 

Otra leyenda no acaecida dentro del palacio, sino en el callejón contiguo, nombrado De la Condesa, hace referencia a dos personajes, ambos Hidalgos y ambos habían entrado por cada extremo de dicho callejón en sus respectivos carruajes, que una vez encontrándose ahí ninguno quiso retreoceder, argumentando el título que poseían y el desagravio que cada uno causaría a sí mismo si fuese a echar marcha atrás. Los dos pasaron dentro de sus carruajes sin alimento y sin moverse 3 días y tres noches, llegando tal suceso a ser tan comentado entre la población. Afortunadamente el supuesto desagravio no llegó a duelo alguno entre los dos Hidalgos, pero sí a oídos del Virrey en turno, quien dispuso que cada Hidalgo retrocediera con su respectivo carruaje hasta las entradas del callejón, uno hasta la entonces Plazuela de Guardiola y el otro hasta la Calle de San Andrés.

 

Fuente: Wikipedia

Comments have been turned off because I don't want to start an online argument . These are my thoughts and they are worth just what you paid for them.

 

I have been asked by several people to “give my take” on COVID vaccine. Your first question should be, why me. Well, if you have read my profile you know that I have spent 42 years in the practice of Public Health. 32 years with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and another 10 as a Deputy Director of the Health Department in the largest and most urbanized county in Georgia. My background is as a statistical epidemiologist. You may not remember that there was a time we didn’t have computers. We were the computers for epidemiology. While with CDC I participated in the war on smallpox, polio, measles, rubella, etc. All of which are basically gone from America. Smallpox is gone from the world. My last 10 years I spent directing the epidemiology and immunization branches of that health department.

 

Disclaimer. I am not a doctor. I may not know how to treat a disease but I know how to stop an epidemic. That’s what I did. Regardless of what you hear, heard immunity is the only way you stop an epidemic, a pandemic, or a simple outbreak. How do you achieve heard immunity? Two ways. Vaccine and disease.

 

That’s out of the way so let’s get to the heart of the matter. First and foremost is the fact that only you should decide whether you want to take a vaccine. It’s your body, not the government’s. Vaccines are wonderful. They were instrumental in winning the war on smallpox, polio, measles, etc. But it was heard immunity that won those wars. Heard immunity is not simply achieved by vaccine. In fact, natural infection is more effective than vaccine. So, what does that mean for me.

 

Well, these are new vaccines. Developed very differently than vaccines of the past. Consequently we have no idea about the long term effects, not much about the short term effects and the real efficacy of these vaccines.

 

If you are over 65 or have underlying conditions (such as diabetes, etc.) you definitely should take the vaccine. I have and my wife has. On the other hand, I would not advise anyone under the age of 18 to take this vaccine. Take your chances and if you get the disease it will more than likely be very mild and then you will be immune. Natural immunity is always better than a vaccine. If you are between 18 and 65 with no underlying conditions, it’s a crap shoot. If I were a woman of child bearing age, I wouldn’t take it on a bet. We have no idea about the long term consequences of taking this vaccine. At my age the risk of dying from the disease outweighs the risk of the vaccine. If I were younger, I would have a very different perspective. Whatever you do, do not give in to the mandate. So very anti-American. Do what you think is right for you. In summary, if you are over 65 or have complications, take it; if you are under 18, don’t take it; If you are a woman of child bearing age that want’s to have children, don’t take it; for the others, just weigh the risk. There is no perfect answer.

 

One last thought. In all of those 42 years, I never saw a study that said cloth mask would do anything to prevent the spread of a virus. N95 mask might help. But the cloth mask everyone is wearing, forget it. Just makes you smell your own bad breath. That’s meant in humor but it’s also true.

 

By the way, that's me in 1965 vaccinating a young Brazilian girl against smallpox.

 

Im „Fall Skripal“ wird die Öffentichkeit von westeuropäischer Politik und Medien belogen und betrogen, dass sich die Balken biegen. Die diesbezüglichen Anschuldigungen gegen zwei russische Bürger halten einer wissenschaftlichen Analyse nicht stand.

(von Andreas von Westphalen, aus www.rubikon.news/artikel/das-skripal-labyrinth)

 

Exakt ein halbes Jahr nach den versuchten Morden an dem Doppelagenten Sergei Skripal und seiner Tochter Julia und nach Monaten mehr oder minder ereignislosem Wartens präsentierte die britische Polizei Fotos und Namen der beiden angeblichen Täter: Ruslan Boschirow und Alexander Petrow. Wenig später wartete das "Recherchenetzwerk" bellingcat mit der Enthüllung auf, in Wirklichkeit seien die Namen Decknamen für zwei russische Geheimdienstmitarbeiter. Die Bild-Zeitung jubelt: „Skripal-Attentäter arbeitet für Russen-Geheimdienst“ und Spiegel Online konstatiert nüchtern: „Präsident Putin setzt seinen Militärgeheimdienst beim Giftanschlag in Salisbury und bei Hackerangriffen gegen den Westen ein.“

 

Fall gelöst? Akte geschlossen? Tatsächlich ist der Fall ausgesprochen kompliziert und der Blick auf das tatsächliche Geschehen durch eine Vielzahl von Nebelkerzen, Halbwahrheiten und falschen Fragen verstellt. Daher wird dieser Artikel versuchen, Schritt für Schritt die zentralen Argumente der britischen und der russischen Seite zu präsentieren, Widersprüche aufzuzeigen und den Blick auf die unbeantworteten Fragen zu lenken. Dadurch soll das Labyrinth Skripal etwas übersichtlicher werden, auch wenn das Unterfangen sehr umfangreich und ohne ein eindeutiges Ergebnis sein wird.

 

Aufgrund der Länge werden die Überschriften der Hauptteile mit einer römischen Ziffer bezeichnet. Hier vorab eine Übersicht der Teile:

 

I. IDENTIFIKATION DER VERDÄCHTIGEN

II. BEWEISE DER TÄTERSCHAFT

III. SKRIPALS TAGESABLAUF

IV. TATZEIT UND TATORT

V. DIE TATWAFFE

VI. DAS OPFER

VII. BEWEISSCHULD

  

II. BEWEISE DER TÄTERSCHAFT

Niemand kann ernsthaft behaupten, dass die bloße Anwesenheit von angeblichen Geheimdienstmitarbeitern in Salisbury ein ausreichender Beweis für ihre Täterschaft ist. Allein, dass in diesem Falle die Verdächtigen und Russland die Tatsache leugnen würden, dass es sich um Geheimdienstmitarbeiter handelt, besagt nicht wirklich etwas. Da es auch andere Gründe geben kann, ihre Identität zu verbergen, ist dies nicht zwangsläufig ein Schuldeingeständnis.

 

Welche Beweise liegen also momentan vor, dass es sich bei den beiden Verdächtigen tatsächlich um die Täter handelt?

 

Kontaminiertes Hotelzimmer

Zwei Monate nach der Tat untersuchte die britische Polizei das Hotelzimmer der beiden Verdächtigen. Offiziell heißt es:

 

„Zwei Abstriche zeigten eine Kontamination von Nowitschok auf einem Niveau unter demjenigen, das die öffentliche Gesundheit gefährden würde. Es wurde beschlossen, vorsorglich weitere Proben aus dem Raum zu entnehmen, auch in den gleichen Bereichen, die ursprünglich getestet wurden, und alle Ergebnisse waren negativ. Wir glauben, dass der erste Prozess der Abstriche die Kontamination beseitigt hat, so niedrig waren die Spuren von Nowitschok im Raum.“ (32).

 

Es ist erstaunlich, dass die Polizei Nowitschok auf zwei Abstrichen nachweisen, aber diesen Test nicht wiederholen kann. Erstaunlicher ist aber, dass in diesem Falle die beiden Verdächtigen in ihrem kleinen Doppelzimmer mit dem Gift hantiert haben müssten — und sich nicht vergiftet hätten.

 

Merkwürdigerweise wurde der Hotelbesitzer nach eigenen Angaben monatelang von der Polizei nicht darüber informiert, nicht einmal in welchem Hotelzimmer die beiden gewohnt haben — seine Hotelunterlagen und die Aufnahmen der Videoüberwachung musste er der Polizei übergeben (33). Dies erklärte er im September. Warum machte die Polizei den Hotelbesitzer also vier Monate lang keine Angaben über eine mögliche Vergiftung? War die Polizei sich so sicher, dass es insgesamt nur noch zwei Abstriche Gift im Zimmer gab und dieses Zimmer nun komplett giftfrei war? Gab es keinen Grund, die zukünftigen Hotelgäste zu schützen?

 

Test mit Türklinke

Sir Mark Sedwill, britischer Sicherheitsberater, teilte in einem Brief an NATO-Generalsekretär Jens Stoltenberg mit, dass Großbritannien Informationen vorlägen, Russland habe die Anwendung von Gift an Türklinken getestet (34). Natürlich ist diese Information, gerade in dem aktuell stattfindenden Propaganda-Krieg, sehr schwer einzuschätzen, so dass sie kaum als Beweis taugt.

 

Offizielle Zeittafel und Überwachungsfotos

Werfen wir nun einen Blick auf die offizielle Zeittafel der Bewegungen der beiden Verdächtigen und die offiziell veröffentlichten Video-Überwachungsbilder.

 

Bild

 

Verdächtige um 11.48 Uhr, Salisbury Bahnhof

 

Bild

 

Verdächtige um 11.58 Uhr, Wilton Road

 

Bild

 

Verdächtige um 13.05 Uhr, Fisherton Road

 

Bild

 

Verdächtige um 13.08 Uhr, Fisherton Road

 

Bild

 

Verdächtige um 13.50 Uhr, Salisbury Bahnhof

 

In der Nähe des Tatorts

Das entscheidende Indiz für die Verdächtigung ist die Nähe der Beiden zum Tatort. So heißt es offiziell: „Die Videoüberwachung zeigt sie in der Nähe des Hauses von Herrn Skripal, und wir glauben, dass sie die Haustür mit Novichok kontaminiert haben“ (35). Dies war um 11.58 Uhr auf der Wilton Road.

 

„In der Nähe des Hauses“ ist sicherlich ein starkes Indiz, aber keineswegs ein Beweis. „In der Nähe“ ist auch durchaus relativ zu verstehen. Die Überwachungskamera an der Shell-Station an der A36 liegt etwa 400 Meter vom Haus der Skripals entfernt, was drei Abzweigungen erforderte, um dorthin zu gelangen. Daher spricht die Polizei auch davon, dass sie „glauben“, es handle sich um die Täter. Daher drängt sich nun die Frage nach der Motivation der beiden Verdächtigen auf: Waren sie Touristen in Salisbury oder galt Skripal ihr Interesse?

 

Abstecher nach Salisbury

In ihrem Interview mit „Russia Today“ erklären die beiden Verdächtigen ihre Reise nach Salisbury: „Ursprünglich wollten wir nach London fliegen und dort etwas Spaß haben. Diesmal war es keine Geschäftsreise.“ (36). Aber Freunde hatten ihnen von Salisbury lange Zeit vorgeschwärmt, also entschieden die beiden Verdächtigen:

 

„Unser Plan war, einige Zeit in London zu verbringen und dann Salisbury zu besuchen. Natürlich wollten wir das alles an einem Tag machen. Aber als wir dort ankamen, konnte unser Flugzeug bei seinem Anflug nicht landen. Das liegt an all dem Chaos, das sie mit dem Transport in Großbritannien am 2. und 3. März hatten. Es gab starken Schneefall, fast alle Städte waren gelähmt. Wir konnten nirgendwo hingehen.“

 

Über ihren ersten Aufenthalt in Salisbury am 3. März sagen sie:

 

„Wir wollten durch die Stadt spazieren gehen, aber da die ganze Stadt mit Schnee bedeckt war, verbrachten wir dort nur 30 Minuten. Wir waren alle nass.“

 

Am 4. März versuchten sie es noch einmal, aber „um die Mittagszeit gab es heftigen Schneeregen“. Sie behaupten, die berühmte Kathedrale gesehen und von ihr Fotos gemacht zu haben, bevor sie entschieden, wieder nach London zurückzufahren. Den Vorschlag des Journalisten von „Russia Today“, ihre Aufnahmen der Kathedrale zu zeigen, lehnen sie zwar nicht ab, gehen aber auch nicht darauf ein.

 

Merkwürdige Touristen

Der Erklärungsversuch der beiden Verdächtigen traf in Großbritannien auf breite Skepsis. Stellvertretend sei hier der detaillierte Widerlegungsversuch von Steven Morris in „The Guardian“ genannt (37).

 

Das Wetterchaos am 2. März, dem Tag der Ankunft der beiden Verdächtigen, entspricht zwar durchaus der Wahrheit (38), aber die Beschreibung für den 3. März, der ersten Ankunft der beiden in Salisbury, die offiziell als Erkundungsreise betrachtet wird, stößt auf Unglauben. Sie verließen London um 11.45 Uhr, erreichten nach zweieinhalbstündiger Zugfahrt Salisbury und blieben dort weniger als zwei Stunden. Das Wetter hielt sie angeblich sogar davon ab, die Kathedrale von Salisbury zu besuchen, die nur zwölf Minuten Gehzeit vom Bahnhof entfernt ist. Bilder aus dem Stadtzentrum belegen, dass dort nur noch spärlich Schnee lag. Da die britische Polizei für den 3. März leider keine Videoaufnahmen veröffentlicht hat, kann man über die Wege der beiden Verdächtigen nur spekulieren. Sie selber erklären, dass sie vierzig Minuten bis eine Stunde im Bahnhofscafé verbracht hätten.

 

Am 4. März reisten die Beiden wieder nach Salisbury, um dort bei besserem Wetter wieder ihr Glück zu versuchen. Ihr Verhalten nach Ankunft am Bahnhof widerspricht für Steven Morris definitiv ihrer Erklärung, sie seien dort auf Sightseeing-Tour gewesen:

 

„Nach Angaben der britischen Behörden sind die Männer, nachdem sie am 4. März um 11.48 Uhr in Salisbury angekommen waren, nicht direkt ins Stadtzentrum oder zur Kathedrale gegangen. Sie hätten rechts in die Stadt abbiegen müssen, wenn sie dem Touristenweg folgen wollten. Stattdessen bogen sie nach links ab und gingen direkt in das Wohngebiet nordwestlich der Stadt, in dem Skripal lebte.“

 

Danach kann man anhand verschiedener veröffentlichter Videoaufnahmen ihre Wegstrecke teilweise rekonstruieren:

 

„Sie wurden um 11.58 Uhr von einer CCTV-Kamera an einer Shell-Tankstelle in der Wilton Road gefilmt. Auf der anderen Seite der Straße befindet sich ein baumgesäumter Weg, der zum Skripal-Haus an der Christie Miller Road führt. Wenn sie direkt zum Haus gingen und den Angriff durchführten, wären sie kurz nach Mittag an der Haustür von Skripal gewesen.“

 

Die Frage von Steven Morris und vielen anderen lautet daher, weshalb sind die beiden Verdächtigen nicht in Richtung der Sehenswürdigkeiten der Stadt gegangen, sondern in Richtung eines Wohnviertels? Leider stellt der Journalist von „Russia Today“ Boschirow und Petrow diese konkrete Frage nicht.

 

Aber auch im weiteren Verlauf ihres Aufenthalts in Salisbury lässt ihr Verhalten Zweifel daran aufkommen, dass sie als Touristen unterwegs sind. Morris weiter:

 

„Um 13.05 Uhr, waren sie nach Angaben der britischen Behörden im Stadtzentrum an der Fisherton Street. Die Polizei hat keine Angaben darüber gemacht, wie sie dorthin gekommen sind. An diesem Punkt waren sie nur wenige Minuten zu Fuß von der Kathedrale entfernt. Es gibt eine Lücke von etwa 40 Minuten in der Zeitachse, die die Polizei zur Verfügung gestellt hat, zwischen dem Zeitpunkt, an dem das Paar in der Fisherton Street gesehen wurde, und dem Zeitpunkt, an dem CCTV-Kameras sie um 13.50 Uhr auf dem Rückweg nach London am Bahnhof filmen. Warum haben sie so wenig Zeit in Salisbury verbracht?“

 

Petrow erklärt im Interview, ihre frühzeitige Rückreise habe wieder am schlechten Wetter gelegen. Betrachtet man die Uhrzeiten, haben sich die beiden für die Besichtigung der Kathedrale maximal eine halbe Stunde Zeit genommen, wenn sie sie überhaupt besucht haben. Ein Beweis sind sie hierfür bisher schuldig geblieben.

 

Zu guter Letzt: Steven Morris weist auch darauf hin, dass sie am 4. März das berühmte Stonehenge hätten besuchen können, wenn sie tatsächlich so viel Wert darauf gelegt hätten, wie sie im Interview erklärten. Denn im Gegensatz zum Vortag war am 4. März Stonehenge wieder für Besucher geöffnet (39).

 

In der Tat wirkt die Erklärung der beiden im Interview wenig glaubhaft, zu sehr widerspricht ihr Verhalten dem Verhalten eines interessierten Touristen, der insbesondere Salisbury sehen möchte und hierfür extra aus Russland angeflogen kommt. Vor allem die Frage, warum sie nicht — wie vermutlich alle Touristen — direkt zur Kathedrale gegangen sind, sondern stattdessen in ein Wohnviertel, lässt diese Erklärung seltsam erscheinen. Sind also die Fakten ein starkes Indiz dafür, dass sie eigentlich in Salisbury auf geheimer Mission waren, um Skripal zu töten?

 

Merkwürdiges Killerteam

Das Wetter in Salisbury am 3. und 4. März war tatsächlich nicht besonders einladend. Zudem tragen die beiden Verdächtigen für das unangenehme Wetter nicht wirklich die passende Kleidung, insbesondere die Sneakers, die sie am Nachmittag des 3. März in London gekauft hatten. Die offiziellen Überwachungsfotos belegen, dass sie durchaus nasse Füße gehabt haben dürften. Dieser Umstand, den man nicht vergessen sollte, lässt vielleicht ihr Verhalten in Salisbury weniger sprunghaft aussehen, als es war. Aber es beantwortet nicht die Frage, weshalb sie sich zuerst in Richtung des Wohngebiets bewegten.

 

Geht man einmal von der Arbeitsthese aus, die beiden seien tatsächlich die Attentäter, dann ergibt sich eine ganz zentrale Frage, die auch Craig Murray stellt:

 

„Das größere Geheimnis dieser beiden ist, als sie das Skripal-Haus besuchten und Nowitschok auf den Türgriff anbrachten: warum gingen sie dann danach wieder geradewegs am Bahnhof vorbei und gingen ins Stadtzentrum von Salisbury, wo sie scheinbar sorgenlos beim Schaufensterbummel in einem Münz- und Souvenirladen gesehen wurden, bevor sie schließlich zum Bahnhof zurückkehrten? Es scheint ein sehr seltsames Fluchtverhalten nach einem versuchten Mord zu sein. In Wahrheit steht ihr Verhalten auf den Fotos im Einklang mit ihrer Tourismusgeschichte.“ (40).

 

Abhängen in Salisbury

Nachdem sie um 13.05 Uhr an der Ecke Fisherton/Bridge Street von einer Überwachungskamera gefilmt wurden, und in Richtung des Bahnhofs gingen, wo sie um 13.27 Uhr den nächsten Zug nach London hätten nehmen können, machten die beiden Verdächtigen etwas ausgesprochen schwer Nachvollziehbares: Nichts.

 

Bild

 

Verdächtige um 13.49 Uhr, Schaufenster des Geschäfts Dauweilers

 

Sie werden um 13.49 von der Überwachungskamera des Geschäfts Dauweilers gefilmt, das unter anderem alte Münze verkauft. Die Beiden betrachten ausführlich das Schaufenster und wollen eintreten, doch das Geschäft ist geschlossen. Sie hatten bereits ihren Zug um 13.27 Uhr verpasst und hätten sicherlich auch ihren nächsten Zug nach London nicht erreicht, wenn das Geschäft offen gewesen und sie eingetreten wären.

 

Besonders merkwürdig: Das Geschäft liegt ganze 200 Meter von dem Ort entfernt, wo sie 40 Minuten zuvor von einer Videoüberwachungskamera gefilmt wurden. Warum verbrachten sie 40 Minuten gleichsam nichtstuend, insbesondere bei dem unangenehmen Wetter? Und insbesondere wenn sie angeblich gerade einen Mordversuch unternommen haben sollten?

 

So fragwürdig also die Erklärung dafür ist, die beiden Verdächtigen hätten eine Sightseeing-Tour in Salisbury gemacht, so wenig überzeugend wird ihr Verhalten dadurch erklärt, dass sie angeblich einen geheimen Mordauftrag ausführten.

 

Nebenbei sei ein interessanter Umstand angemerkt, der aber vielleicht nur ein Zufall ist. Wie Bay Kurley betont, verbringen die beiden Verdächtigen ihre 40 unerklärlichen Minuten in einem Umkreis von 100 Metern von der exakten Route, die Skripal um 13.30 Uhr in die Stadt nehmen wird, bevor er anschließend Enten füttert (41).

 

Inkompetenz?

Im Hinblick auf ihre Aktivitäten in Salisbury ergeben sich noch eine ganze Reihe weiterer Fragen, sobald man die These zugrunde legt, sie hätten ein Attentat auf Skripal und seine Tochter unternommen. Gerade wenn es sich bei ihnen um Geheimdienstmitarbeiter handeln soll, erscheinen einige Aspekte mehr als unverständlich:

Sie hätten den Mordversuch unternommen, ohne vorab die Gegend des Tatorts zu erkunden — man darf davon ausgehen, dass die britische Polizei Überwachungsbilder des Vortages zeigen würde, wenn die Beiden auch hier in der Nähe des Tatorts gewesen wären. Dies ist umso erstaunlicher, als sich Skripals Haus am Ende einer langgezogenen, gut einsehbaren Sackgasse befindet, wo man geeignete Fluchtwege vergeblich sucht.

Sie hätten den Mordversuch am hellen Tag unternommen.

Sie hätten ihn bei Schneewetter unternommen, obwohl bekannt ist, dass Nowitschok hier recht schnell seine Wirkung verliert.

Sie hätten ihn unternommen, ohne sicher sein zu können, dass Skripal nicht zu Hause ist und sie bei der Tat überrascht.

 

Ross Cassidy, Nachbar und enger Freund Skripals, wundert sich ebenfalls:

„Diese Typen sind professionelle Attentäter. Es wäre für sie viel zu dreist gewesen, an einem Sonntagmittag am helllichten Tag in eine Sackgasse zu gehen. Sergeis Haus liegt in der Sackgasse. Er hatte eine umgebaute Garage, die er als sein Büro nutzte — das gibt einen freien Blick auf die Straße. Fast immer öffnete Sergei uns die Tür, bevor wir die Chance hatten zu klopfen. Wann immer wir ihn besuchten, sah er, wie wir uns näherten.” (42).

Warum haben sie hingegen den Mordversuch nicht vor Morgengrauen durchgeführt, um sicher sein zu können, dass Skripal zu Hause ist und dass er in Bälde auch die Türklinke berühren würde, wenn er das Haus verlässt?

Sie hätten den Mordversuch unternommen, ohne zu wissen, wann Skripal nach Hause kommt. Wenn Skripal erst am Abend zurückgekehrt wäre oder gar am nächsten Tag, wäre der Mordversuch von vornherein zum Scheitern verurteilt gewesen.

 

Warum wurde nicht abgewartet, dass Skripal nach Russland zurückkehrt, um den 90. Geburtstag mit seiner Mutter zu feiern, wie es laut seinem Freund Ross Cassidy Skripals Plan und Wunsch war?

Warum unternehmen sie keinerlei Anstrengungen, um unerkannt zu bleiben?

Warum nehmen sie kein Hotel in Salisbury, um weniger „Angriffsfläche“ für die Überwachung zu geben und zur Not ihre Anwesenheit als Touristen leicht tarnen zu können?

Warum nehmen sie keine Mietwagen anstatt mit dem Zug zu fahren und dann zu Fuß zu gehen?

Warum vermeiden sie keine Videoüberwachungsbilder?

Warum haben sie ihr Äußeres nicht verändert?

 

...

 

V. DIE TATWAFFE

Kommen wir nun zur Tatwaffe. Im Gegensatz zur Frage der Tatzeit scheint dieser Aspekt der Tat mehr als ausreichend dokumentiert und Nowitschok als Tatwaffe eindeutig identifiziert zu sein. Leider ist aber auch die Frage nach der Tatwaffe weiterhin ein zentraler Abschnitt im Labyrinth Skripal.

 

Jeder hat es

Ein ursprüngliches Hauptargument für die Verdächtigung Russlands hat sich aus sehr besorgniserregenden Gründen völlig in Luft aufgelöst. Anfangs hieß es, dass Nowitschok ausschließlich in Russland hergestellt wird, so dass dessen Verwendung schon an sich ein hinreichender Beweis sei, um Russland als Hauptverdächtigen auszumachen — sowie die Tatsache, dass Skripal ein ehemaliger Mitarbeiter des russischen Geheimdienstes war.

 

Im Laufe der Monate hat sich jedoch eine erschreckend lange Liste von Ländern ergeben, die im Besitz von Nowitschok sind oder waren. Beispielsweise gehört hierzu nun auch Tschechien, die mit Nowitschok im Jahr 2017 experimentiert haben (59). Ebenso hatte auch Deutschland eine Probe des Nervengiftes (60). Die Vermutung steht sogar im Raum, dass es Nowitschok in Labors von weiteren NATO-Ländern gab. Auf eine Kleine Anfrage der Linksfraktion verweigerte die Bundesregierung Ende April die Antwort (61).

 

Die OPCW

Man sollte daher an die Schlussfolgerung der Organisation für das Verbot chemischer Waffen (OPCW) erinnern:

 

„Die Ergebnisse der Analyse (...) bestätigen die Ergebnisse des Vereinigten Königreichs in Bezug auf die Identität der toxischen Chemikalie, die in Salisbury verwendet wurde und drei Personen schwer verletzte. Das TAV-Team stellt fest, dass die giftige Chemikalie von hoher Reinheit war. Letzteres wird aus dem nahezu vollständigen Fehlen von Verunreinigungen geschlossen.“ (62).

 

Entgegen einer Reihe anderslautender Medienberichte identifiziert die OPCW mit keinem Wort Russland als Herkunftsland des Nervengiftes.

 

Bizarr das Verhalten des Direktors der OPCW. Ahmet Uzumcu hatte der „New York Times“ vollmundig erklärt, dass beim Mordversuch 50 bis 100 Gramm Nowitschok verwendet worden seien (63). Tatsächlich musste die Organisation ihren Direktor wegen dieser groben Falschaussage öffentlich korrigieren, denn ihrer Einschätzung nach handelt es sich wahrscheinlich um eine Menge im Milligramm-Bereich (64).

 

Ein nicht-tödliches tödliches Gift

Grundsätzlich bleiben zwei zentrale Fragen rund um das Nervengift Nowitschok weiterhin unbeantwortet: Warum war das Gift nicht tödlich? Warum setzte die Wirkung des Giftes erst mit mehreren Stunden Verspätung ein?

 

Der letztmögliche Zeitpunkt, an dem die Skripals das Gift hätten berühren können, ist 13.15 Uhr. Danach fuhren sie in die Stadt und besuchten offiziell ein Restaurant und anschließend ein Pub. Erst drei Stunden nach dem spätesten Zeitpunkt einer möglichen Vergiftung brachen die Skripals zusammen und Passanten riefen einen Notarzt. Die offene Frage lautet daher sehr einfach: Ist dies der normale Verlauf einer Vergiftung mit Nowitschok?

 

Des Weiteren steht die Frage im Raum, weshalb ein hochkomplexer Anschlag mit einem militärischen Nervengift durchgeführt wird, wenn dieses Gift nicht tödlich ist. Dan Kaszeta, Spezialist für ABC-Waffen und Mitarbeiter von „bellingcat“ vermutet:

 

„Alle Organophosphat-Nervenstoffe werden in Gegenwart von Wasser durch einen Mechanismus namens Hydrolyse abgebaut. Also, ist der fragliche Türgriff nass geworden? Salisbury ist nicht bekannt für ein trockenes Klima.“ (65).

 

Tatsächlich schneite es am Wochenende der Tat (66). Diese scheinbar einzige Erklärung führt aber zwangsläufig zur Konstatierung der Inkompetenz mit der der Anschlag durchgeführt worden wäre.

 

Richard Guthrie, Experte für Chemiewaffen, sieht den Grund für die reduzierte Wirksamkeit des Giftes in der Substanz, die dem Gift beigemischt wurde und auf die Klinke gebracht worden sein könnte:

 

„Wenn eine Hand diese Türklinke berührt, braucht man ein Material, das an der Hand haften bleibt, ohne auf eine andere Oberfläche zu fallen. Es ist sehr selten, dass ein Gift das selbst macht.“

 

Guthrie spekuliert, es könnte sich um eine Creme oder eine ölige Substanz handeln. Dies hätte aber auch verhindert, dass genügend Gift in die Haut eindringen konnte, um tödlich zu wirken (67).

 

Das mag zwar plausibel klingen, würde aber wieder eine Inkompetenz der Attentäter dokumentieren. Zudem dürfte der Idee, zusätzliches Material sei beigefügt worden, die extrem hohe Reinheit des Giftes widersprechen, die die OPCW festgestellt hat. Daher schließt sich auch die Frage an: In welcher Form wurde das Gift auf der Türklinke angebracht?

 

Nur ein Vollidiot

Wil Mirsajanow, Mitenwickler von Nowitschok in den 1980er Jahren, erklärte im Interview mit dem russischen Rundfunksender „Kommersant FM“ im Hinblick auf das feuchte Wetter, das in Salisbury am Tattag herrschte:

 

„Bei solcher Luftfeuchtigkeit hat nur ein Idiot diesen Stoff einsetzen können, der nichts über die chemischen Eigenschaften von Nowitschok weiß. Wenn man es ins Wasser gibt, wird es nach ein paar Stunden keine Spur mehr davon geben.“ (68).

 

Fehlende Sicherheitsvorkehrung

Mit der Verwendung von Nowitschok geht noch eine weitere Frage einher. Wenn die beiden Verdächtigen tatsächlich die Täter sein sollen, haben sie das Gift vermutlich ohne adäquaten Schutzanzug angebracht. Auf den Bildern der Videoüberwachungskamera sieht man sie mit nur einem einzigen mittelgroßen Rucksack.

 

Zum Vergleich betrachte man die Schutzanzüge, die bei der Spurensicherung in Salisbury aus Sicherheitsgründen verwendet wurden (69). Der Polizist Nick Bailey, der als Dritter mit Nowitschok vergiftet wurde, erlitt die Verletzung durch das Nervengift, obwohl er Handschuhe trug, als er die Türklinke anfasste (70). Warum also riskieren die beiden Tatverdächtigen ihre Gesundheit, um nicht zu sagen ihr Leben?

 

Hinterlegtes Beweisstück

Am 27. Juni, fast vier Monate nach dem Anschlagsversuch auf die Skripals, fand Charlie Rowley ein Parfümfläschchen in einer Charity-Box in Salisbury. Er nahm es mit nach Hause, wo sich drei Tage später seine Freundin Dawn Sturgess mit Nowitschock vergiften sollte, das sich tatsächlich in der Parfümflasche befand. Sie verstarb an den Folgen.

 

Rowley betont später, dass die Parfümflasche „ungeöffnet war, die Schachtel, in der sie sich befand, war versiegelt, und dass sie ein Messer benutzen mussten, um sie durchzuschneiden“ (71). Daraus ergeben sich aber einmal mehr entscheidende Fragen: Warum sollten die Täter ein Beweisstück in Salisbury hinterlassen haben? Und wo ist der Behälter, in dem sich das Nervengift befand, das an Skripals Haus benutzt wurde?

---

 

VI. DAS OPFER

Allzu leicht verliert man bei der Untersuchung des Mordversuchs die Person Sergei Skripals aus den Augen. Der Hinweis, dass er ein früherer russischer Geheimdienstmitarbeiter gewesen ist, erscheint vollkommen ausreichend, um ein Mordmotiv für die russische Seite zu begründen. Dass er aber bereits all sein Wissen gegen Geld an den britischen Auslandsgeheimdienst MI6 verkauft hatte und seit vierzehn Jahren über keine neuen Informationen über Russland verfügt, wird gerne vergessen.

 

Arbeitgeber

Seit dem Jahr 2010, als Skripal mit drei weiteren Doppelagenten in einem US-amerikanisch-russischen Deal gegen festgenommene russische Agenten ausgetauscht wurde, lebte er in Großbritannien. Die Frage stellt sich, wovon er eigentlich lebte. Tatsächlich war Skripal bis zu seiner versuchten Ermordung mit Wissen Großbritanniens für nicht weniger als vier Geheimdienste tätig (72). Er informierte die tschechischen Sicherheitsbehörden (73). Er war ebenfalls als Berater in Estland (74). Skripal arbeitete aber auch mit dem spanischen Geheimdienst CNI in ihrem Kampf gegen das organisierte Verbrechen zusammen (75).

 

Damit wäre aber auch durchaus denkbar, dass Skripal nicht im Fadenkreuz der russischen Politik, sondern der russischen Mafia war. Und zu guter Letzt war er auch weiterhin für den britischen Auslandsgeheimdienst MI6 tätig.

 

Das Trump-Dossier

Skripals Arbeit betraf aber vermutlich auch einen anderen sensiblen Bereich. Der „Telegraph“ berichtete nur drei Tage nach dem Mordversuch:

 

„Ein Sicherheitsberater, der für das Unternehmen gearbeitet hat, das das umstrittene Dossier über Donald Trump zusammengestellt hat, lebte in der Nähe des am vergangenen Wochenende vergifteten russischen Doppelagenten, so wurde behauptet. Der Berater, den ‚The Telegraph‘ nicht identifizieren will, lebte in der Nähe von Col. Skripal und soll ihn schon seit einiger Zeit kennen.“ (76).

 

Das ominöse Trump-Dossier, welches belegen soll, dass Trump zum einen durch Russland unterstützt wurde und zum anderen Russland über kompromittierendes Material gegen Trump verfügen soll, wurde von Christopher Steele geschrieben (77).

 

Steele war längere Zeit für den MI6 tätig, erst seit 1999 von Moskau aus, dann war er bis 2006 der Leiter der Russland-Abteilung des MI6 in London, bevor er den Geheimdienst verließ und das Business-Intelligence-Unternehmen Orbis gründete. Seit Veröffentlichung des Trump-Dossiers ist er untergetaucht (78).

 

Es ist sehr unwahrscheinlich, dass sich Steele für Informationen über Trumps Verbindungen nach Russland nicht an Skripal gewendet haben würde, der in einem der größten Austausch-Aktionen von Spionen aus Russland nach Großbritannien freigekommen war und den Steele aufgrund seiner Position innerhalb des MI6 gekannt haben muss. Diese Meinung vertritt auch Professor Anthony Glees, Direktor des Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies an der University of Buckingham (79).

 

CNN berichtet von einer weiteren Person, die sich hinter dem Berater verstecken soll, den „The Telegraph“ nicht identifizieren möchte. CNN beruft sich auf eine Darstellung des russischen Geheimdienstes FSB, die von einem enttarnten Agenten erfahren hatten, dass dieser von Pablo Miller rekrutiert worden war, der als Mitarbeiter des MI6 in der britischen Botschaft in Estland arbeitete. Diese Botschaft war bereits als führende Stelle von Skripal identifiziert worden, als dieser noch als Doppelagent tätig war (80).

 

Pablo Miller lebt zudem ebenso wie Skripal in Salisbury, was der Aussage des „Telegraph“ entsprechen würde. Seine LinkedIn-Seite verwies zudem auf seine Arbeit für Orbis, der Firma von Christopher Steele. Allerdings besteht „Guardian“-Journalist Luke Harding darauf, dass diese Info nicht stimme, ohne dies jedoch näher zu belegen (81).

 

Der Aspekt einer möglichen Mitarbeit am Trump-Dossier von Skripal zieht noch weitere Kreise. Am 7. März, am selben Tag wie das Erscheinen des obigen Artikels im „Telegraph“, die den Sicherheitsberater, der am Trump-Dossier arbeitete und Skripal kannte, nicht idenfitizieren wollten, wurde eine sogenannte DSMA-Notice an die Medien geschickt. Die „Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice“ zielt darauf ab, dass Medien Namen aus Gründen der nationalen Sicherheit nicht nennen. Dies dürfte auch erklären, warum der „Telegraph“ keinen Namen nennen mag (82).

 

Am 14. März erfolgte die zweite DSMA-Notice.

 

Angst

Skripals Nachbar und enger Freund Rick Cassidy berichtet, dass Skripal in Angst lebte: „Etwas hatte Sergei in den Wochen vor dem Anschlag in Angst versetzt. Er war nervös, ich weiß nicht warum, und er hat sogar sein Handy gewechselt.“ Auf der Fahrt zum Flughafen am 3. März hatte er das Gefühl, ein Auto verfolge sie.

 

Insgesamt schien Skripal für seinen Freund in einem „Zustand erhöhter Aufmerksamkeit“ gewesen zu sein (83). Was natürlich auch die Frage in den Raum stellt, ob Skripal über eine Videoüberwachungsanlage seines Hauses verfügt hat.

 

Am Tattag selber erschien Skripal ausgesprochen unruhig zu sein. Im Restaurant gab er sich sehr aggressiv. Ein Zeuge beschreibt: „Er hat nur geschrien und die Beherrschung verloren.“ Skripal forderte seine Rechnung und zahlte, sobald er sein Hauptgericht serviert bekommen hatte (84).

 

Besucher im Krankenhaus

Während Skripal lange Zeit im Krankenhaus um sein Leben kämpft und dann weitere Wochen dort seine Rekonvaleszenz verbrachte, wurde er hermetisch von der Außenwelt abgeschottet, sogar seinem engen Freund Cassidy wurde ein Besuch verboten.

 

Es überrascht daher umso mehr, dass der Journalist Mark Urban, der an einem Buch über Spionage nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg schrieb und in dem Zusammenhang vor dem Mordversuch bereits mehrere Interviews mit Skripal geführt hatte, offenbar Zugang ins Krankenhaus hatte. So schreibt Luke Harding, der sich auf Urbans frisch erschienenes Buch „Die Akte Skripal: Der neue Spionagekrieg und Russlands langer Arm in den Westen“ beruft, Skripal „zögerte zunächst zu glauben, dass die russische Regierung versucht hatte, ihn zu töten (…) anfangs mochte er nur ungern glauben, dass er das Ziel eines Kreml-Anschlages gewesen war“ (85).

 

Wieso passt dieses Bild so wenig mit dem Bild zusammen, dass Skripals Freund Cassidy von ihm zeichnet? Und wie kann es sein, dass ein Journalist scheinbar Zugang zu Skripal hat, aber enge Freunde ihn nicht besuchen dürfen?

  

...

 

VII. BEWEISSCHULD

Es ist in gewisser Weise tragisch, aber immer wieder muss man auf den Aspekt der Beweislast hinweisen.

 

Deutsche Bundesregierung braucht keine Beweise

Auch Deutschland hatte sich an der Ausweisung russischer Diplomaten im Zuge der Skripal-Affäre beteiligt, als sie drei Wochen nach der Tat vier russische Diplomaten des Landes verwies (86).

 

Drei Monate nach der Tat fragte ein Journalist von „Russia Today“, welche weiteren Faktoren über Nowitschok hinaus dafür sprechen, dass der mutmaßliche Angriff auf die Skripals durch Russland erfolgt ist. Regierungssprecher Steffen Seibert beantwortet dies, ohne zu antworten:

 

„Wir haben damals gesagt: Wir teilen die Einschätzung des Vereinigten Königreichs, dass es keine andere plausible Erklärung gibt. Diese Haltung ist weiterhin die Haltung der Bundesregierung.“ (87).

 

Zeitgleich musste die Bundesregierung im parlamentarischen Kontrollausschuss jedoch einräumen, dass sie die Entscheidung der Ausweisung russischer Diplomaten ohne Vorlage von Beweisen getroffen habe und weiterhin auf Beweise warte. Die Tagesschau schlussfolgert ungewöhnlich deutlich:

 

„Die Entscheidung, sich an der Ausweisung russischer Diplomaten zu beteiligen, erscheint damit mehr als fragwürdig.“ (88).

 

Interessant ist auch der Doppelstandard im Hinblick auf den Fall Kashoggi und Saudi Arabien. Während im Falle von Skripal und Russland die Bundesregierung russische Diplomaten ausgewiesen hat, bevor überhaupt eine Untersuchung in Gang gesetzt worden ist, bestehen sie im Hinblick auf Saudi-Arabien darauf, dass dem Rechtsstaat Genüge getan werde und man auf eine abgeschlossene Untersuchung besteht, bevor irgendwelche Konsequenzen gegenüber Saudi-Arabien gezogen werden (89).

 

Während die deutsche Regierung durchaus Kritik einstecken musste, erhält die russische Regierung für ihr Verhalten zu Beginn der Skripal-Affäre Rückendeckung aus unerwarteter Richtung. Russland hatte anlässlich einer Dringlichkeitssitzung der Organisation zum Verbot chemischer Waffen (OPCW) angeboten, gemeinsam mit Großbritannien im Skripal-Fall zu ermitteln. Britische Diplomaten hatten den Vorschlag aus Moskau als „pervers" abgelehnt und Russland eine 48-Stunden-Frist gesetzt, um seine eigene Rolle aufzuklären (90).

 

Die russische Regierung hatte dieses Ultimatum zurückgewiesen und entsprechend verstreichen lassen.

 

Der Wissenschaftliche Dienst des Bundestages schreibt hierzu in seinem Gutachten, die russische Regierung habe mit ihrem Angebot einer gemeinsamen Aufklärung, „zumindest formal seine Kooperationsbereitschaft bekundet“. Zudem sei „ein offenkundiger Verstoß Russlands gegen Kooperationsverpflichtungen aus dem Chemiewaffenübereinkommen nicht zu erkennen“ (91).

 

Richtige und falsche Fragen

Das Labyrinth Skripal ist ein Resultat des aktuellen Informationskrieges. Es hat den Anschein, dass beide Seiten Nebelkerzen zünden. Der US-amerikanische Schriftsteller Thomas Pynchon schrieb einmal:

„Wenn sie dich dazu bringen können, die falschen Fragen zu stellen, müssen sie keine Angst vor den Antworten haben.“

Die russische Seite sollte sicherlich darüber aufklären, ob Boschirow und Petrow die wirklichen Namen der beiden Verdächtigen sind und die Frage aufklären, warum sie am 4. März eine knappe halbe Stunde in Richtung des Wohnviertels gingen. Die britische Seite muss hingegen zwingend die Beweise auf den Tisch legen, ob und wann die Skripals nach 9.15 Uhr noch einmal nach Hause gekommen sind.

Arguments

No.4 garage after an argument with a cyclist - 12/9/2016

…he knows who he is, 'cause he got two big arguments.

Wild in Spain | PHOTOGRAPHING SEABIRDS IN IRELAND

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXYOgwxPB5U&t=

  

I have just come back from a trip to Ireland in order to photograph seabirds. The main goals were gannets and puffins but I could also enjoyed other species such as razorbills which are really spectacular birds, guillemots, seals and kittiwakes.

As you can see I went there with five friends of mine from Spain. We had sunny conditions along the three days in the island which is cool for backlights and nice warm light in the evening, but we missed some rainy conditions. Perhaps next year!

why the pain why the agony ?

conflicting arguments born of jealousy

 

why the games why the antagony ?

is this infatuation or is it a felony ?

 

seeking to please all with your humble harmony

forgeting your heart's dearest .. an extreme irony

 

is it too much to ask for a little monotony ?

actions contradicting promises you define hypocracy

 

is initiating a greeting to you a blasphemy ?

or is it pride that impedes your expression of love for me?

 

claims you make imply you know responsibility

yet you are still characterized by selfish hostility

 

you are astonished at results of relationships so many

have you thought that it could be your idiotic mentality ?

 

you think that fate unites individuals based on compatibility ?

No sweety what holds them together is adaptability

 

I do not expect you to understand the reason for my poetry

I speak sense while you your desires allow democracy

 

I do not know what to say my mind you've made your colony

I believe you should stop influencing my reality

 

I thought we were beyond all this formality

I thought we could enjoy this time without theatricality

 

Evidently silly and unwise was my susceptibility

to have given you another chance so easily

 

you come into my life and make me remember joviality

only to back off in confusion and utter perplexity

 

To begin with you are not fit to have my progeny

you do not comply with what i expect in modesty

 

You are not worth dwelling upon consistently

since you give me no thought while away from me

 

My ideals in life i would like to live conservatively

while you are clothed in excessive layers of liberty

 

You seek all the excitement, intimacy, and emotionality

Yet you cannot commit or show a little reliability

 

i'm tired of being on stand-by for you repeatedly

i'm not a toy that you can throw around trivially

 

I can go on and on listing why we shouldn't be

but i think the message has been conveyed effeciently

 

Do not misunderstand i do not mean to mock thee

i only defend my argument of why we cannot be

 

An honor it was to have experienced around me your beauty

Your soul's warmth i will miss over and over constantly

 

your hugs were one of a kind holding me so sincerely

i tried honey i tried so hard but you failed me

 

So i sought Allah's guidance to deal with this calamity

something i should have done long before this infelicity

 

what i am about to do might seem like irrationality

but i have given it thought so forgive my morality

 

I'm sorry dearest angel i must refrain from thee

Our destiny together is not meant to be

 

-MAK

 

Sometimes things are just not meant to be ...

 

Ask Allah for guidance for He knows what we know not .....

Está na Cota!

Black skimmers on the Rockport, Texas beach.

Thanks all!

1. The Mind-Body Problem and the History of Dualism

1.1 The Mind-Body Problem

The mind-body problem is the problem: what is the relationship between mind and body? Or alternatively: what is the relationship between mental properties and physical properties?

Humans have (or seem to have) both physical properties and mental properties. People have (or seem to have)the sort of properties attributed in the physical sciences. These physical properties include size, weight, shape, colour, motion through space and time, etc. But they also have (or seem to have) mental properties, which we do not attribute to typical physical objects These properties involve consciousness (including perceptual experience, emotional experience, and much else), intentionality (including beliefs, desires, and much else), and they are possessed by a subject or a self. Physical properties are public, in the sense that they are, in principle, equally observable by anyone. Some physical properties – like those of an electron – are not directly observable at all, but they are equally available to all, to the same degree, with scientific equipment and techniques. The same is not true of mental properties. I may be able to tell that you are in pain by your behaviour, but only you can feel it directly. Similarly, you just know how something looks to you, and I can only surmise. Conscious mental events are private to the subject, who has a privileged access to them of a kind no-one has to the physical. The mind-body problem concerns the relationship between these two sets of properties. The mind-body problem breaks down into a number of components. The ontological question: what are mental states and what are physical states? Is one class a subclass of the other, so that all mental states are physical, or vice versa? Or are mental states and physical states entirely distinct?

The causal question: do physical states influence mental states? Do mental states influence physical states? If so, how?

Different aspects of the mind-body problem arise for different aspects of the mental, such as consciousness, intentionality, the self. The problem of consciousness: what is consciousness? How is it related to the brain and the body? The problem of intentionality: what is intentionality? How is it related to the brain and the body? The problem of the self: what is the self? How is it related to the brain and the body? Other aspects of the mind-body problem arise for aspects of the physical. For example:

 

The problem of embodiment: what is it for the mind to be housed in a body? What is it for a body to belong to a particular subject?

The seemingly intractable nature of these problems have given rise to many different philosophical views.

 

Materialist views say that, despite appearances to the contrary, mental states are just physical states. Behaviourism, functionalism, mind-brain identity theory and the computational theory of mind are examples of how materialists attempt to explain how this can be so. The most common factor in such theories is the attempt to explicate the nature of mind and consciousness in terms of their ability to directly or indirectly modify behaviour, but there are versions of materialism that try to tie the mental to the physical without explicitly explaining the mental in terms of its behaviour-modifying role. The latter are often grouped together under the label ‘non-reductive physicalism’, though this label is itself rendered elusive because of the controversial nature of the term ‘reduction’.

 

Idealist views say that physical states are really mental. This is because the physical world is an empirical world and, as such, it is the intersubjective product of our collective experience.

 

Dualist views (the subject of this entry) say that the mental and the physical are both real and neither can be assimilated to the other. For the various forms that dualism can take and the associated problems, see below.

 

In sum, we can say that there is a mind-body problem because both consciousness and thought, broadly construed, seem very different from anything physical and there is no convincing consensus on how to build a satisfactorily unified picture of creatures possessed of both a mind and a body.

 

Other entries which concern aspects of the mind-body problem include (among many others): behaviorism, consciousness, eliminative materialism, epiphenomenalism, functionalism, identity theory, intentionality, mental causation, neutral monism, and physicalism.

 

1.2 History of dualism

In dualism, ‘mind’ is contrasted with ‘body’, but at different times, different aspects of the mind have been the centre of attention. In the classical and mediaeval periods, it was the intellect that was thought to be most obviously resistant to a materialistic account: from Descartes on, the main stumbling block to materialist monism was supposed to be ‘consciousness’, of which phenomenal consciousness or sensation came to be considered as the paradigm instance.

 

The classical emphasis originates in Plato’s Phaedo. Plato believed that the true substances are not physical bodies, which are ephemeral, but the eternal Forms of which bodies are imperfect copies. These Forms not only make the world possible, they also make it intelligible, because they perform the role of universals, or what Frege called ‘concepts’. It is their connection with intelligibility that is relevant to the philosophy of mind. Because Forms are the grounds of intelligibility, they are what the intellect must grasp in the process of understanding. In Phaedo Plato presents a variety of arguments for the immortality of the soul, but the one that is relevant for our purposes is that the intellect is immaterial because Forms are immaterial and intellect must have an affinity with the Forms it apprehends (78b4–84b8). This affinity is so strong that the soul strives to leave the body in which it is imprisoned and to dwell in the realm of Forms. It may take many reincarnations before this is achieved. Plato’s dualism is not, therefore, simply a doctrine in the philosophy of mind, but an integral part of his whole metaphysics.

 

One problem with Plato’s dualism was that, though he speaks of the soul as imprisoned in the body, there is no clear account of what binds a particular soul to a particular body. Their difference in nature makes the union a mystery.

 

Aristotle did not believe in Platonic Forms, existing independently of their instances. Aristotelian forms (the capital ‘F’ has disappeared with their standing as autonomous entities) are the natures and properties of things and exist embodied in those things. This enabled Aristotle to explain the union of body and soul by saying that the soul is the form of the body. This means that a particular person’s soul is no more than his nature as a human being. Because this seems to make the soul into a property of the body, it led many interpreters, both ancient and modern, to interpret his theory as materialistic. The interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of mind – and, indeed, of his whole doctrine of form – remains as live an issue today as it was immediately after his death (Robinson 1983 and 1991; Nussbaum 1984; Rorty and Nussbaum, eds, 1992). Nevertheless, the text makes it clear that Aristotle believed that the intellect, though part of the soul, differs from other faculties in not having a bodily organ. His argument for this constitutes a more tightly argued case than Plato’s for the immateriality of thought and, hence, for a kind of dualism. He argued that the intellect must be immaterial because if it were material it could not receive all forms. Just as the eye, because of its particular physical nature, is sensitive to light but not to sound, and the ear to sound and not to light, so, if the intellect were in a physical organ it could be sensitive only to a restricted range of physical things; but this is not the case, for we can think about any kind of material object (De Anima III,4; 429a10–b9). As it does not have a material organ, its activity must be essentially immaterial.

 

It is common for modern Aristotelians, who otherwise have a high view of Aristotle’s relevance to modern philosophy, to treat this argument as being of purely historical interest, and not essential to Aristotle’s system as a whole. They emphasize that he was not a ‘Cartesian’ dualist, because the intellect is an aspect of the soul and the soul is the form of the body, not a separate substance. Kenny (1989) argues that Aristotle’s theory of mind as form gives him an account similar to Ryle (1949), for it makes the soul equivalent to the dispositions possessed by a living body. This ‘anti-Cartesian’ approach to Aristotle arguably ignores the fact that, for Aristotle, the form is the substance.

 

These issues might seem to be of purely historical interest. But we shall see in below, in section 4.5, that this is not so.

 

The identification of form and substance is a feature of Aristotle’s system that Aquinas effectively exploits in this context, identifying soul, intellect and form, and treating them as a substance. (See, for example, Aquinas (1912), Part I, questions 75 and 76.) But though the form (and, hence, the intellect with which it is identical) are the substance of the human person, they are not the person itself. Aquinas says that when one addresses prayers to a saint – other than the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is believed to retain her body in heaven and is, therefore, always a complete person – one should say, not, for example, ‘Saint Peter pray for us’, but ‘soul of Saint Peter pray for us’. The soul, though an immaterial substance, is the person only when united with its body. Without the body, those aspects of its personal memory that depend on images (which are held to be corporeal) will be lost.(See Aquinas (1912), Part I, question 89.)

 

The more modern versions of dualism have their origin in Descartes’ Meditations, and in the debate that was consequent upon Descartes’ theory. Descartes was a substance dualist. He believed that there were two kinds of substance: matter, of which the essential property is that it is spatially extended; and mind, of which the essential property is that it thinks. Descartes’ conception of the relation between mind and body was quite different from that held in the Aristotelian tradition. For Aristotle, there is no exact science of matter. How matter behaves is essentially affected by the form that is in it. You cannot combine just any matter with any form – you cannot make a knife out of butter, nor a human being out of paper – so the nature of the matter is a necessary condition for the nature of the substance. But the nature of the substance does not follow from the nature of its matter alone: there is no ‘bottom up’ account of substances. Matter is a determinable made determinate by form. This was how Aristotle thought that he was able to explain the connection of soul to body: a particular soul exists as the organizing principle in a particular parcel of matter.

 

The belief in the relative indeterminacy of matter is one reason for Aristotle’s rejection of atomism. If matter is atomic, then it is already a collection of determinate objects in its own right, and it becomes natural to regard the properties of macroscopic substances as mere summations of the natures of the atoms.

 

Although, unlike most of his fashionable contemporaries and immediate successors, Descartes was not an atomist, he was, like the others, a mechanist about the properties of matter. Bodies are machines that work according to their own laws. Except where there are minds interfering with it, matter proceeds deterministically, in its own right. Where there are minds requiring to influence bodies, they must work by ‘pulling levers’ in a piece of machinery that already has its own laws of operation. This raises the question of where those ‘levers’ are in the body. Descartes opted for the pineal gland, mainly because it is not duplicated on both sides of the brain, so it is a candidate for having a unique, unifying function.

 

The main uncertainty that faced Descartes and his contemporaries, however, was not where interaction took place, but how two things so different as thought and extension could interact at all. This would be particularly mysterious if one had an impact view of causal interaction, as would anyone influenced by atomism, for whom the paradigm of causation is like two billiard balls cannoning off one another.

 

Various of Descartes’ disciples, such as Arnold Geulincx and Nicholas Malebranche, concluded that all mind-body interactions required the direct intervention of God. The appropriate states of mind and body were only the occasions for such intervention, not real causes. Now it would be convenient to think that occasionalists held that all causation was natural except for that between mind and body. In fact they generalized their conclusion and treated all causation as directly dependent on God. Why this was so, we cannot discuss here.

 

Descartes’ conception of a dualism of substances came under attack from the more radical empiricists, who found it difficult to attach sense to the concept of substance at all. Locke, as a moderate empiricist, accepted that there were both material and immaterial substances. Berkeley famously rejected material substance, because he rejected all existence outside the mind. In his early Notebooks, he toyed with the idea of rejecting immaterial substance, because we could have no idea of it, and reducing the self to a collection of the ‘ideas’ that constituted its contents. Finally, he decided that the self, conceived as something over and above the ideas of which it was aware, was essential for an adequate understanding of the human person. Although the self and its acts are not presented to consciousness as objects of awareness, we are obliquely aware of them simply by dint of being active subjects. Hume rejected such claims, and proclaimed the self to be nothing more than a concatenation of its ephemeral contents.

 

In fact, Hume criticised the whole conception of substance for lacking in empirical content: when you search for the owner of the properties that make up a substance, you find nothing but further properties. Consequently, the mind is, he claimed, nothing but a ‘bundle’ or ‘heap’ of impressions and ideas – that is, of particular mental states or events, without an owner. This position has been labelled bundle dualism, and it is a special case of a general bundle theory of substance, according to which objects in general are just organised collections of properties. The problem for the Humean is to explain what binds the elements in the bundle together. This is an issue for any kind of substance, but for material bodies the solution seems fairly straightforward: the unity of a physical bundle is constituted by some form of causal interaction between the elements in the bundle. For the mind, mere causal connection is not enough; some further relation of co-consciousness is required. We shall see in 5.2.1 that it is problematic whether one can treat such a relation as more primitive than the notion of belonging to a subject.

 

One should note the following about Hume’s theory. His bundle theory is a theory about the nature of the unity of the mind. As a theory about this unity, it is not necessarily dualist. Parfit (1970, 1984) and Shoemaker (1984, ch. 2), for example, accept it as physicalists. In general, physicalists will accept it unless they wish to ascribe the unity to the brain or the organism as a whole. Before the bundle theory can be dualist one must accept property dualism, for more about which, see the next section.

 

A crisis in the history of dualism came, however, with the growing popularity of mechanism in science in the nineteenth century. According to the mechanist, the world is, as it would now be expressed, ‘closed under physics’. This means that everything that happens follows from and is in accord with the laws of physics. There is, therefore, no scope for interference in the physical world by the mind in the way that interactionism seems to require. According to the mechanist, the conscious mind is an epiphenomenon (a notion given general currency by T. H. Huxley 1893): that is, it is a by-product of the physical system which has no influence back on it. In this way, the facts of consciousness are acknowledged but the integrity of physical science is preserved. However, many philosophers found it implausible to claim such things as the following; the pain that I have when you hit me, the visual sensations I have when I see the ferocious lion bearing down on me or the conscious sense of understanding I have when I hear your argument – all have nothing directly to do with the way I respond. It is very largely due to the need to avoid this counterintuitiveness that we owe the concern of twentieth century philosophy to devise a plausible form of materialist monism. But, although dualism has been out of fashion in psychology since the advent of behaviourism (Watson 1913) and in philosophy since Ryle (1949), the argument is by no means over. Some distinguished neurologists, such as Sherrington (1940) and Eccles (Popper and Eccles 1977) have continued to defend dualism as the only theory that can preserve the data of consciousness. Amongst mainstream philosophers, discontent with physicalism led to a modest revival of property dualism in the last decade of the twentieth century. At least some of the reasons for this should become clear below.

 

2. Varieties of Dualism: Ontology

There are various ways of dividing up kinds of dualism. One natural way is in terms of what sorts of things one chooses to be dualistic about. The most common categories lighted upon for these purposes are substance and property, giving one substance dualism and property dualism. There is, however, an important third category, namely predicate dualism. As this last is the weakest theory, in the sense that it claims least, I shall begin by characterizing it.

 

2.1 Predicate dualism

Predicate dualism is the theory that psychological or mentalistic predicates are (a) essential for a full description of the world and (b) are not reducible to physicalistic predicates. For a mental predicate to be reducible, there would be bridging laws connecting types of psychological states to types of physical ones in such a way that the use of the mental predicate carried no information that could not be expressed without it. An example of what we believe to be a true type reduction outside psychology is the case of water, where water is always H2O: something is water if and only if it is H2O. If one were to replace the word ‘water’ by ‘H2O’, it is plausible to say that one could convey all the same information. But the terms in many of the special sciences (that is, any science except physics itself) are not reducible in this way. Not every hurricane or every infectious disease, let alone every devaluation of the currency or every coup d’etat has the same constitutive structure. These states are defined more by what they do than by their composition or structure. Their names are classified as functional terms rather than natural kind terms. It goes with this that such kinds of state are multiply realizable; that is, they may be constituted by different kinds of physical structures under different circumstances. Because of this, unlike in the case of water and H2O, one could not replace these terms by some more basic physical description and still convey the same information. There is no particular description, using the language of physics or chemistry, that would do the work of the word ‘hurricane’, in the way that ‘H2O’ would do the work of ‘water’. It is widely agreed that many, if not all, psychological states are similarly irreducible, and so psychological predicates are not reducible to physical descriptions and one has predicate dualism. (The classic source for irreducibility in the special sciences in general is Fodor (1974), and for irreducibility in the philosophy of mind, Davidson (1971).)

 

2.2 Property Dualism

Whereas predicate dualism says that there are two essentially different kinds of predicates in our language, property dualism says that there are two essentially different kinds of property out in the world. Property dualism can be seen as a step stronger than predicate dualism. Although the predicate ‘hurricane’ is not equivalent to any single description using the language of physics, we believe that each individual hurricane is nothing but a collection of physical atoms behaving in a certain way: one need have no more than the physical atoms, with their normal physical properties, following normal physical laws, for there to be a hurricane. One might say that we need more than the language of physics to describe and explain the weather, but we do not need more than its ontology. There is token identity between each individual hurricane and a mass of atoms, even if there is no type identity between hurricanes as kinds and some particular structure of atoms as a kind. Genuine property dualism occurs when, even at the individual level, the ontology of physics is not sufficient to constitute what is there. The irreducible language is not just another way of describing what there is, it requires that there be something more there than was allowed for in the initial ontology. Until the early part of the twentieth century, it was common to think that biological phenomena (‘life’) required property dualism (an irreducible ‘vital force’), but nowadays the special physical sciences other than psychology are generally thought to involve only predicate dualism. In the case of mind, property dualism is defended by those who argue that the qualitative nature of consciousness is not merely another way of categorizing states of the brain or of behaviour, but a genuinely emergent phenomenon.

 

2.3 Substance Dualism

There are two important concepts deployed in this notion. One is that of substance, the other is the dualism of these substances. A substance is characterized by its properties, but, according to those who believe in substances, it is more than the collection of the properties it possesses, it is the thing which possesses them. So the mind is not just a collection of thoughts, but is that which thinks, an immaterial substance over and above its immaterial states. Properties are the properties of objects. If one is a property dualist, one may wonder what kinds of objects possess the irreducible or immaterial properties in which one believes. One can use a neutral expression and attribute them to persons, but, until one has an account of person, this is not explanatory. One might attribute them to human beings qua animals, or to the brains of these animals. Then one will be holding that these immaterial properties are possessed by what is otherwise a purely material thing. But one may also think that not only mental states are immaterial, but that the subject that possesses them must also be immaterial. Then one will be a dualist about that to which mental states and properties belong as well about the properties themselves. Now one might try to think of these subjects as just bundles of the immaterial states. This is Hume’s view. But if one thinks that the owner of these states is something quite over and above the states themselves, and is immaterial, as they are, one will be a substance dualist.

 

Substance dualism is also often dubbed ‘Cartesian dualism’, but some substance dualists are keen to distinguish their theories from Descartes’s. E. J. Lowe, for example, is a substance dualist, in the following sense. He holds that a normal human being involves two substances, one a body and the other a person. The latter is not, however, a purely mental substance that can be defined in terms of thought or consciousness alone, as Descartes claimed. But persons and their bodies have different identity conditions and are both substances, so there are two substances essentially involved in a human being, hence this is a form of substance dualism. Lowe (2006) claims that his theory is close to P. F. Strawson’s (1959), whilst admitting that Strawson would not have called it substance dualism.

 

3. Varieties of Dualism: Interaction

If mind and body are different realms, in the way required by either property or substance dualism, then there arises the question of how they are related. Common sense tells us that they interact: thoughts and feelings are at least sometimes caused by bodily events and at least sometimes themselves give rise to bodily responses. I shall now consider briefly the problems for interactionism, and its main rivals, epiphenomenalism and parallelism.

 

3.1 Interactionism

Interactionism is the view that mind and body – or mental events and physical events – causally influence each other. That this is so is one of our common-sense beliefs, because it appears to be a feature of everyday experience. The physical world influences my experience through my senses, and I often react behaviourally to those experiences. My thinking, too, influences my speech and my actions. There is, therefore, a massive natural prejudice in favour of interactionism. It has been claimed, however, that it faces serious problems (some of which were anticipated in section 1).

 

The simplest objection to interaction is that, in so far as mental properties, states or substances are of radically different kinds from each other, they lack that communality necessary for interaction. It is generally agreed that, in its most naive form, this objection to interactionism rests on a ‘billiard ball’ picture of causation: if all causation is by impact, how can the material and the immaterial impact upon each other? But if causation is either by a more ethereal force or energy or only a matter of constant conjunction, there would appear to be no problem in principle with the idea of interaction of mind and body.

 

Even if there is no objection in principle, there appears to be a conflict between interactionism and some basic principles of physical science. For example, if causal power was flowing in and out of the physical system, energy would not be conserved, and the conservation of energy is a fundamental scientific law. Various responses have been made to this. One suggestion is that it might be possible for mind to influence the distribution of energy, without altering its quantity. (See Averill and Keating 1981). Another response is to challenge the relevance of the conservation principle in this context. The conservation principle states that ‘in a causally isolated system the total amount of energy will remain constant’. Whereas ‘[t]he interactionist denies…that the human body is an isolated system’, so the principle is irrelevant (Larmer (1986), 282: this article presents a good brief survey of the options). This approach has been termed conditionality, namely the view that conservation is conditional on the physical system being closed, that is, that nothing non-physical is interacting or interfering with it, and, of course, the interactionist claims that this condition is, trivially, not met. That conditionality is the best line for the dualist to take, and that other approaches do not work, is defended in Pitts (2019) and Cucu and Pitts (2019). This, they claim, makes the plausibility of interactionism an empirical matter which only close investigation on the fine operation of the brain could hope to settle. Cucu, in a separate article (2018), claims to find critical neuronal events which do not have sufficient physical explanation.This claim clearly needs further investigation.

 

Robins Collins (2011) has claimed that the appeal to conservation by opponents of interactionism is something of a red herring because conservation principles are not ubiquitous in physics. He argues that energy is not conserved in general relativity, in quantum theory, or in the universe taken as a whole. Why then, should we insist on it in mind-brain interaction?

 

Most discussion of interactionism takes place in the context of the assumption that it is incompatible with the world’s being ‘closed under physics’. This is a very natural assumption, but it is not justified if causal overdetermination of behaviour is possible. There could then be a complete physical cause of behaviour, and a mental one. The strongest intuitive objection against overdetermination is clearly stated by Mills (1996: 112), who is himself a defender of overdetermination.

 

For X to be a cause of Y, X must contribute something to Y. The only way a purely mental event could contribute to a purely physical one would be to contribute some feature not already determined by a purely physical event. But if physical closure is true, there is no feature of the purely physical effect that is not contributed by the purely physical cause. Hence interactionism violates physical closure after all.

 

Mills says that this argument is invalid, because a physical event can have features not explained by the event which is its sufficient cause. For example, “the rock’s hitting the window is causally sufficient for the window’s breaking, and the window’s breaking has the feature of being the third window-breaking in the house this year; but the facts about prior window-breakings, rather than the rock’s hitting the window, are what cause this window-breaking to have this feature.”

 

The opponent of overdetermination could perhaps reply that his principle applies, not to every feature of events, but to a subgroup – say, intrinsic features, not merely relational or comparative ones. It is this kind of feature that the mental event would have to cause, but physical closure leaves no room for this. These matters are still controversial.

 

The problem with closure of physics may be radically altered if physical laws are indeterministic, as quantum theory seems to assert. If physical laws are deterministic, then any interference from outside would lead to a breach of those laws. But if they are indeterministic, might not interference produce a result that has a probability greater than zero, and so be consistent with the laws? This way, one might have interaction yet preserve a kind of nomological closure, in the sense that no laws are infringed. Because it involves assessing the significance and consequences of quantum theory, this is a difficult matter for the non-physicist to assess. Some argue that indeterminacy manifests itself only on the subatomic level, being cancelled out by the time one reaches even very tiny macroscopic objects: and human behaviour is a macroscopic phenomenon. Others argue that the structure of the brain is so finely tuned that minute variations could have macroscopic effects, rather in the way that, according to ‘chaos theory’, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China might affect the weather in New York. (For discussion of this, see Eccles (1980), (1987), and Popper and Eccles (1977).) Still others argue that quantum indeterminacy manifests itself directly at a high level, when acts of observation collapse the wave function, suggesting that the mind may play a direct role in affecting the state of the world (Hodgson 1988; Stapp 1993).

 

3.2 Epiphenomenalism

If the reality of property dualism is not to be denied, but the problem of how the immaterial is to affect the material is to be avoided, then epiphenomenalism may seem to be the answer. According to this theory, mental events are caused by physical events, but have no causal influence on the physical. I have introduced this theory as if its point were to avoid the problem of how two different categories of thing might interact. In fact, it is, at best, an incomplete solution to this problem. If it is mysterious how the non-physical can have it in its nature to influence the physical, it ought to be equally mysterious how the physical can have it in its nature to produce something non-physical. But that this latter is what occurs is an essential claim of epiphenomenalism. (For development of this point, see Green (2003), 149–51). In fact, epiphenomenalism is more effective as a way of saving the autonomy of the physical (the world as ‘closed under physics’) than as a contribution to avoiding the need for the physical and non-physical to have causal commerce.

 

There are at least three serious problems for epiphenomenalism. First, as I indicated in section 1, it is profoundly counterintuitive. What could be more apparent than that it is the pain that I feel that makes me cry, or the visual experience of the boulder rolling towards me that makes me run away? At least one can say that epiphenomenalism is a fall-back position: it tends to be adopted because other options are held to be unacceptable.

 

The second problem is that, if mental states do nothing, there is no reason why they should have evolved. This objection ties in with the first: the intuition there was that conscious states clearly modify our behaviour in certain ways, such as avoiding danger, and it is plain that they are very useful from an evolutionary perspective.

 

Frank Jackson (1982) replies to this objection by saying that it is the brain state associated with pain that evolves for this reason: the sensation is a by-product. Evolution is full of useless or even harmful by-products. For example, polar bears have evolved thick coats to keep them warm, even though this has the damaging side effect that they are heavy to carry. Jackson’s point is true in general, but does not seem to apply very happily to the case of mind. The heaviness of the polar bear’s coat follows directly from those properties and laws which make it warm: one could not, in any simple way, have one without the other. But with mental states, dualistically conceived, the situation is quite the opposite. The laws of physical nature which, the mechanist says, make brain states cause behaviour, in no way explain why brain states should give rise to conscious ones. The laws linking mind and brain are what Feigl (1958) calls nomological danglers, that is, brute facts added onto the body of integrated physical law. Why there should have been by-products of that kind seems to have no evolutionary explanation.

 

The third problem concerns the rationality of belief in epiphenomenalism, via its effect on the problem of other minds. It is natural to say that I know that I have mental states because I experience them directly. But how can I justify my belief that others have them? The simple version of the ‘argument from analogy’ says that I can extrapolate from my own case. I know that certain of my mental states are correlated with certain pieces of behaviour, and so I infer that similar behaviour in others is also accompanied by similar mental states. Many hold that this is a weak argument because it is induction from one instance, namely, my own. The argument is stronger if it is not a simple induction but an ‘argument to the best explanation’. I seem to know from my own case that mental events can be the explanation of behaviour, and I know of no other candidate explanation for typical human behaviour, so I postulate the same explanation for the behaviour of others. But if epiphenomenalism is true, my mental states do not explain my behaviour and there is a physical explanation for the behaviour of others. It is explanatorily redundant to postulate such states for others. I know, by introspection, that I have them, but is it not just as likely that I alone am subject to this quirk of nature, rather than that everyone is?

 

For more detailed treatment and further reading on this topic, see the entry epiphenomenalism.

3.3 Parallelism

The epiphenomenalist wishes to preserve the integrity of physical science and the physical world, and appends those mental features that he cannot reduce. The parallelist preserves both realms intact, but denies all causal interaction between them. They run in harmony with each other, but not because their mutual influence keeps each other in line. That they should behave as if they were interacting would seem to be a bizarre coincidence. This is why parallelism has tended to be adopted only by those – like Leibniz – who believe in a pre-established harmony, set in place by God. The progression of thought can be seen as follows. Descartes believes in a more or less natural form of interaction between immaterial mind and material body. Malebranche thought that this was impossible naturally, and so required God to intervene specifically on each occasion on which interaction was required. Leibniz decided that God might as well set things up so that they always behaved as if they were interacting, without particular intervention being required. Outside such a theistic framework, the theory is incredible. Even within such a framework, one might well sympathise with Berkeley’s instinct that once genuine interaction is ruled out one is best advised to allow that God creates the physical world directly, within the mental realm itself, as a construct out of experience.

 

4. Arguments for Dualism

4.1 The Knowledge Argument Against Physicalism

One category of arguments for dualism is constituted by the standard objections against physicalism. Prime examples are those based on the existence of qualia, the most important of which is the so-called ‘knowledge argument’. Because this argument has its own entry (see the entry qualia: the knowledge argument), I shall deal relatively briefly with it here. One should bear in mind, however, that all arguments against physicalism are also arguments for the irreducible and hence immaterial nature of the mind and, given the existence of the material world, are thus arguments for dualism.

 

The knowledge argument asks us to imagine a future scientist who has lacked a certain sensory modality from birth, but who has acquired a perfect scientific understanding of how this modality operates in others. This scientist – call him Harpo – may have been born stone deaf, but become the world’s greatest expert on the machinery of hearing: he knows everything that there is to know within the range of the physical and behavioural sciences about hearing. Suppose that Harpo, thanks to developments in neurosurgery, has an operation which finally enables him to hear. It is suggested that he will then learn something he did not know before, which can be expressed as what it is like to hear, or the qualitative or phenomenal nature of sound. These qualitative features of experience are generally referred to as qualia. If Harpo learns something new, he did not know everything before. He knew all the physical facts before. So what he learns on coming to hear – the facts about the nature of experience or the nature of qualia – are non-physical. This establishes at least a state or property dualism. (See Jackson 1982; Robinson 1982.)

 

There are at least two lines of response to this popular but controversial argument. First is the ‘ability’ response. According to this, Harpo does not acquire any new factual knowledge, only ‘knowledge how’, in the form of the ability to respond directly to sounds, which he could not do before. This essentially behaviouristic account is exactly what the intuition behind the argument is meant to overthrow. Putting ourselves in Harpo’s position, it is meant to be obvious that what he acquires is knowledge of what something is like, not just how to do something. Such appeals to intuition are always, of course, open to denial by those who claim not to share the intuition. Some ability theorists seem to blur the distinction between knowing what something is like and knowing how to do something, by saying that the ability Harpo acquires is to imagine or remember the nature of sound. In this case, what he acquires the ability to do involves the representation to himself of what the thing is like. But this conception of representing to oneself, especially in the form of imagination, seems sufficiently close to producing in oneself something very like a sensory experience that it only defers the problem: until one has a physicalist gloss on what constitutes such representations as those involved in conscious memory and imagination, no progress has been made.

 

The other line of response is to argue that, although Harpo’s new knowledge is factual, it is not knowledge of a new fact. Rather, it is new way of grasping something that he already knew. He does not realise this, because the concepts employed to capture experience (such as ‘looks red’ or ‘sounds C-sharp’) are similar to demonstratives, and demonstrative concepts lack the kind of descriptive content that allow one to infer what they express from other pieces of information that one may already possess. A total scientific knowledge of the world would not enable you to say which time was ‘now’ or which place was ‘here’. Demonstrative concepts pick something out without saying anything extra about it. Similarly, the scientific knowledge that Harpo originally possessed did not enable him to anticipate what it would be like to re-express some parts of that knowledge using the demonstrative concepts that only experience can give one. The knowledge, therefore, appears to be genuinely new, whereas only the mode of conceiving it is novel.

 

Proponents of the epistemic argument respond that it is problematic to maintain both that the qualitative nature of experience can be genuinely novel, and that the quality itself be the same as some property already grasped scientifically: does not the experience’s phenomenal nature, which the demonstrative concepts capture, constitute a property in its own right? Another way to put this is to say that phenomenal concepts are not pure demonstratives, like ‘here’ and ‘now’, or ‘this’ and ‘that’, because they do capture a genuine qualitative content. Furthermore, experiencing does not seem to consist simply in exercising a particular kind of concept, demonstrative or not. When Harpo has his new form of experience, he does not simply exercise a new concept; he also grasps something new – the phenomenal quality – with that concept. How decisive these considerations are, remains controversial.

 

4.2 The Argument from Predicate Dualism to Property Dualism

I said above that predicate dualism might seem to have no ontological consequences, because it is concerned only with the different way things can be described within the contexts of the different sciences, not with any real difference in the things themselves. This, however, can be disputed.

 

The argument from predicate to property dualism moves in two steps, both controversial. The first claims that the irreducible special sciences, which are the sources of irreducible predicates, are not wholly objective in the way that physics is, but depend for their subject matter upon interest-relative perspectives on the world. This means that they, and the predicates special to them, depend on the existence of minds and mental states, for only minds have interest-relative perspectives. The second claim is that psychology – the science of the mental – is itself an irreducible special science, and so it, too, presupposes the existence of the mental. Mental predicates therefore presuppose the mentality that creates them: mentality cannot consist simply in the applicability of the predicates themselves.

 

First, let us consider the claim that the special sciences are not fully objective, but are interest-relative.

 

No-one would deny, of course, that the very same subject matter or ‘hunk of reality’ can be described in irreducibly different ways and it still be just that subject matter or piece of reality. A mass of matter could be characterized as a hurricane, or as a collection of chemical elements, or as mass of sub-atomic particles, and there be only the one mass of matter. But such different explanatory frameworks seem to presuppose different perspectives on that subject matter.

 

This is where basic physics, and perhaps those sciences reducible to basic physics, differ from irreducible special sciences. On a realist construal, the completed physics cuts physical reality up at its ultimate joints: any special science which is nomically strictly reducible to physics also, in virtue of this reduction, it could be argued, cuts reality at its joints, but not at its minutest ones. If scientific realism is true, a completed physics will tell one how the world is, independently of any special interest or concern: it is just how the world is. It would seem that, by contrast, a science which is not nomically reducible to physics does not take its legitimation from the underlying reality in this direct way. Rather, such a science is formed from the collaboration between, on the one hand, objective similarities in the world and, on the other, perspectives and interests of those who devise the science. The concept of hurricane is brought to bear from the perspective of creatures concerned about the weather. Creatures totally indifferent to the weather would have no reason to take the real patterns of phenomena that hurricanes share as constituting a single kind of thing. With the irreducible special sciences, there is an issue of salience , which involves a subjective component: a selection of phenomena with a certain teleology in mind is required before their structures or patterns are reified. The entities of metereology or biology are, in this respect, rather like Gestalt phenomena.

 

Even accepting this, why might it be thought that the perspectivality of the special sciences leads to a genuine property dualism in the philosophy of mind? It might seem to do so for the following reason. Having a perspective on the world, perceptual or intellectual, is a psychological state. So the irreducible special sciences presuppose the existence of mind. If one is to avoid an ontological dualism, the mind that has this perspective must be part of the physical reality on which it has its perspective. But psychology, it seems to be almost universally agreed, is one of those special sciences that is not reducible to physics, so if its subject matter is to be physical, it itself presupposes a perspective and, hence, the existence of a mind to see matter as psychological. If this mind is physical and irreducible, it presupposes mind to see it as such. We seem to be in a vicious circle or regress.

 

We can now understand the motivation for full-blown reduction. A true basic physics represents the world as it is in itself, and if the special sciences were reducible, then the existence of their ontologies would make sense as expressions of the physical, not just as ways of seeing or interpreting it. They could be understood ‘from the bottom up’, not from top down. The irreducibility of the special sciences creates no problem for the dualist, who sees the explanatory endeavor of the physical sciences as something carried on from a perspective conceptually outside of the physical world. Nor need this worry a physicalist, if he can reduce psychology, for then he could understand ‘from the bottom up’ the acts (with their internal, intentional contents) which created the irreducible ontologies of the other sciences. But psychology is one of the least likely of sciences to be reduced. If psychology cannot be reduced, this line of reasoning leads to real emergence for mental acts and hence to a real dualism for the properties those acts instantiate (Robinson 2003).

 

4.3 The Modal Argument

There is an argument, which has roots in Descartes (Meditation VI), which is a modal argument for dualism. One might put it as follows:

 

It is imaginable that one’s mind might exist without one’s body.

therefore

 

It is conceivable that one’s mind might exist without one’s body.

therefore

 

It is possible one’s mind might exist without one’s body.

therefore

 

One’s mind is a different entity from one’s body.

The rationale of the argument is a move from imaginability to real possibility. I include (2) because the notion of conceivability has one foot in the psychological camp, like imaginability, and one in the camp of pure logical possibility and therefore helps in the transition from one to the other.

 

This argument should be distinguished from a similar ‘conceivability’ argument, often known as the ‘zombie hypothesis’, which claims the imaginability and possibility of my body (or, in some forms, a body physically just like it) existing without there being any conscious states associated with it. (See, for example, Chalmers (1996), 94–9.) This latter argument, if sound, would show that conscious states were something over and above physical states. It is a different argument because the hypothesis that the unaltered body could exist without the mind is not the same as the suggestion that the mind might continue to exist without the body, nor are they trivially equivalent. The zombie argument establishes only property dualism and a property dualist might think disembodied existence inconceivable – for example, if he thought the identity of a mind through time depended on its relation to a body (e.g., Penelhum 1970).

 

Before Kripke (1972/80), the first challenge to such an argument would have concerned the move from (3) to (4). When philosophers generally believed in contingent identity, that move seemed to them invalid. But nowadays that inference is generally accepted and the issue concerns the relation between imaginability and possibility. No-one would nowadays identify the two (except, perhaps, for certain quasi-realists and anti-realists), but the view that imaginability is a solid test for possibility has been strongly defended. W. D. Hart ((1994), 266), for example, argues that no clear example has been produced such that “one can imagine that p (and tell less imaginative folk a story that enables them to imagine that p) plus a good argument that it is impossible that p. No such counterexamples have been forthcoming…” This claim is at least contentious. There seem to be good arguments that time-travel is incoherent, but every episode of Star-Trek or Doctor Who shows how one can imagine what it might be like were it possible.

 

It is worth relating the appeal to possibility in this argument to that involved in the more modest, anti-physicalist, zombie argument. The possibility of this hypothesis is also challenged, but all that is necessary for a zombie to be possible is that all and only the things that the physical sciences say about the body be true of such a creature. As the concepts involved in such sciences – e.g., neuron, cell, muscle – seem to make no reference, explicit or implicit, to their association with consciousness, and are defined in purely physical terms in the relevant science texts, there is a very powerful prima facie case for thinking that something could meet the condition of being just like them and lack any connection with consciousness. There is no parallel clear, uncontroversial and regimented account of mental concepts as a whole that fails to invoke, explicitly or implicitly, physical (e.g., behavioural) states.

 

For an analytical behaviourist the appeal to imaginability made in the argument fails, not because imagination is not a reliable guide to possibility, but because we cannot imagine such a thing, as it is a priori impossible. The impossibility of disembodiment is rather like that of time travel, because it is demonstrable a priori, though only by arguments that are controversial. The argument can only get under way for those philosophers who accept that the issue cannot be settled a priori, so the possibility of the disembodiment that we can imagine is still prima facie open.

 

A major rationale of those who think that imagination is not a safe indication of possibility, even when such possibility is not eliminable a priori, is that we can imagine that a posteriori necessities might be false – for example, that Hesperus might not be identical to Phosphorus. But if Kripke is correct, that is not a real possibility. Another way of putting this point is that there are many epistemic possibilities which are imaginable because they are epistemic possibilities, but which are not real possibilities. Richard Swinburne (1997, New Appendix C), whilst accepting this argument in general, has interesting reasons for thinking that it cannot apply in the mind-body case. He argues that in cases that involve a posteriori necessities, such as those identities that need discovering, it is because we identify those entities only by their ‘stereotypes’ (that is, by their superficial features observable by the layman) that we can be wrong about their essences. In the case of our experience of ourselves this is not true.

 

Now it is true that the essence of Hesperus cannot be discovered by a mere thought experiment. That is because what makes Hesperus Hesperus is not the stereotype, but what underlies it. But it does not follow that no one can ever have access to the essence of a substance, but must always rely for identification on a fallible stereotype. One might think that for the person him or herself, while what makes that person that person underlies what is observable to others, it does not underlie what is experienceable by that person, but is given directly in their own self-awareness.

 

This is a very appealing Cartesian intuition: my identity as the thinking thing that I am is revealed to me in consciousness, it is not something beyond the veil of consciousness. Now it could be replied to this that though I do access myself as a conscious subject, so classifying myself is rather like considering myself qua cyclist. Just as I might never have been a cyclist, I might never have been conscious, if things had gone wrong in my very early life. I am the organism, the animal, which might not have developed to the point of consciousness, and that essence as animal is not revealed to me just by introspection.

 

But there are vital differences between these cases. A cyclist is explicitly presented as a human being (or creature of some other animal species) cycling: there is no temptation to think of a cyclist as a basic kind of thing in its own right. Consciousness is not presented as a property of something, but as the subject itself. Swinburne’s claim that when we refer to ourselves we are referring to something we think we are directly aware of and not to ‘something we know not what’ that underlies our experience seemingly ‘of ourselves’ has powerful intuitive appeal and could only be overthrown by very forceful arguments. Yet, even if we are not referring primarily to a substrate, but to what is revealed in consciousness, could it not still be the case that there is a necessity stronger than causal connecting this consciousness to something physical? To consider this further we must investigate what the limits are of the possible analogy between cases of the water-H2O kind, and the mind-body relation.

 

We start from the analogy between the water stereotype – how water presents itself – and how consciousness is given first-personally to the subject. It is plausible to claim that something like water could exist without being H2O, but hardly that it could exist without some underlying nature. There is, however, no reason to deny that this underlying nature could be homogenous with its manifest nature: that is, it would seem to be possible that there is a world in which the water-like stuff is an element, as the ancients thought, and is water-like all the way down. The claim of the proponents of the dualist argument is that this latter kind of situation can be known to be true a priori in the case of the mind: that is, one can tell by introspection that it is not more-than-causally dependent on something of a radically different nature, such as a brain or body. What grounds might one have for thinking that one could tell that a priori?

 

The only general argument that seem to be available for this would be the principle that, for any two levels of discourse, A and B, they are more-than-causally connected only if one entails the other a priori. And the argument for accepting this principle would be that the relatively uncontroversial cases of a posteriori necessary connections are in fact cases in which one can argue a priori from facts about the microstructure to the manifest facts. In the case of water, for example, it would be claimed that it follows a priori that if there were something with the properties attributed to H2O by chemistry on a micro level, then that thing would possess waterish properties on a macro level. What is established a posteriori is that it is in fact H2O that underlies and explains the waterish properties round here, not something else: the sufficiency of the base – were it to obtain – to explain the phenomena, can be deduced a priori from the supposed nature of the base. This is, in effect, the argument that Chalmers uses to defend the zombie hypothesis. The suggestion is that the whole category of a posteriori more-than-causally necessary connections (often identified as a separate category of metaphysical necessity) comes to no more than this. If we accept that this is the correct account of a posteriori necessities, and also deny the analytically reductionist theories that would be necessary for a priori connections between mind and body, as conceived, for example, by the behaviourist or the functionalist, does it follow that we can tell a priori that consciousness is not more-than-causally dependent on the body?

 

It is helpful in considering this question to employ a distinction like Berkeley’s between ideas and notions. Ideas are the objects of our mental acts, and they capture transparently – ‘by way of image or likeness’ (Principles, sect. 27) – that of which they are the ideas. The self and its faculties are not the objects of our mental acts, but are captured only obliquely in the performance of its acts, and of these Berkeley says we have notions, meaning by this that what we capture of the nature of the dynamic agent does not seem to have the same transparency as what we capture as the normal objects of the agent’s mental acts. It is not necessary to become involved in Berkeley’s metaphysics in general to feel the force of the claim that the contents and internal objects of our mental acts are grasped with a lucidity that exceeds that of our grasp of the agent and the acts per se. Because of this, notions of the self perhaps have a ‘thickness’ and are permanently contestable: there seems always to be room for more dispute as to what is involved in that concept. (Though we shall see later, in 5.2.2, that there is a ‘non-thick’ way of taking the Berkeleyan concept of a notion.)

 

Because ‘thickness’ always leaves room for dispute, this is one of those cases in philosophy in which one is at the mercy of the arguments philosophers happen to think up. The conceivability argument creates a prima facie case for thinking that mind has no more than causal ontological dependence on the body. Let us assume that one rejects analytical (behaviourist or functionalist) accounts of mental predicates. Then the above arguments show that any necessary dependence of mind on body does not follow the model that applies in other scientific cases. This does not show that there may not be other reasons for believing in such dependence, for so many of the concepts in the area are still contested. For example, it might be argued that identity through time requires the kind of spatial existence that only body can give: or that the causal continuity required by a stream of consciousness cannot be a property of mere phenomena. All these might be put forward as ways of filling out those aspects of our understanding of the self that are only obliquely, not transparently, presented in self-awareness. The dualist must respond to any claim as it arises: the conceivability argument does not pre-empt them.......

5.2 The Unity of the Mind

Whether one believes that the mind is a substance or just a bundle of properties, the same challenge arises, which is to explain the nature of the unity of the immaterial mind. For the Cartesian, that means explaining how he understands the notion of immaterial substance. For the Humean, the issue is to explain the nature of the relationship between the different elements in the bundle that binds them into one thing. Neither tradition has been notably successful in this latter task: indeed, Hume, in the appendix to the Treatise, declared himself wholly mystified by the problem, rejecting his own initial solution (though quite why is not clear from the text).

plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/

Abortion is Murder - Here is 100% PROOF:

The video that so-called 'Pro-choice' and the multi-milion dollar, abortion industry don't want you to see.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrl9QQHY2vA&feature=youtu.be

 

Could any sane person, after watching this video, not agree that abortion is pure evil?

______________________________________________

The argument that abortion is about choice for women is just a scam.

Genuine and sensible feminists realise that they have been conned. They understand that the real reason abortion was legalised was to give a 'choice' to unscrupulous men, not for the benefit of women.

They realise that abortion was legalised as a charter for irresponsible men, so they could sexually exploit women for their own selfish satisfaction, and then walk away whenever they wanted, leaving the woman to deal with any consequential pregnancy. And, now that abortion is legalised, if anyone objects to such men failing to face up to the responsibility of supporting their offspring, they have the excuse that the woman has the choice to get rid of the baby. So, it becomes entirely her problem if she decides to keep it, not theirs.

_____________________________________________

“Abortion is a Satanic Sacrifice.”

Former satanic High Wizard, Zachary King. Zachary was an average boy from an American neighborhood who worked his way up to High Wizard in the coven and actively pushed satan’s agenda, including ritualistic abortions. Zachary is currently writing about his experiences in a new book titled, “Abortion is a Satanic Sacrifice.”

Zachary King is currently living in Florida with his wife. He is an international speaker spreading the story of his miraculous rescue from satanism anywhere he can.

www.lepantoinstitute.org/abortion/former-satanist-i-perfo...

 

Zachary’s website is www.allsaintsministry.org

 

Satanists are becoming a leading public voice for abortion rights. In their mockery of Christianity they reveal the dark heart of abortion-on-demand: the radical worship of self.

Read more at: www.nationalreview.com/article/422999/meet-new-public-fac...

www.nationalreview.com/article/422999/meet-new-public-fac...

 

Why satanism is now on the center stage in the culture war.

www.crisismagazine.com/2019/why-satanism-is-now-on-the-ce...

 

Why liberals care about climate change but not abortion?

www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/why-liberals-care-about-climat...

 

The globalist agenda. The EU, fledgling, world government. World dictatorship. A return to Babel.

The irrefutable evidence in plain sight: youtu.be/2l1RhAI-rRQ

 

EUbabel. The shocking occult symbolism of the European Union.

peuplesobservateursblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/togo-all...

  

The dangerous, climate change scam:

A high level of Co2 is essential for our survival. The exact opposite of what we a led to believe by the popular, eco- fanatic narrative which is designed to convince people of the necessity for globalist control.

See the truth here:

youtu.be/TjlmFr4FMvI

youtu.be/U-9UlF8hkhs

Madrid

 

Kentmere 100 en ID-11 1+3 | Lomo T-43 75mm 4,5 | Lubitel 166B

Northern Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis), also called an Arctic Fulmar, having an aerial argument. Image taken off the cliffs at Látrabjarg in Iceland. There are thousands of birds that occupy these cliffs.

I took the original photo many years ago, on colour slide film, and recently played with it in photoshop !

what you are, so is your world.

the little man in side!

.....you is doing all that hell sadbad man .........THINK YOURSELF HAPPY

.

 

4 hours ov tit for tat

....wiv another writer ,not really that happy about how this one turned out and karma as already broke my camra screen....ouch ....boo hoo

Website I Instagram I Facebook

 

Day 31 - Street photography while walking around Wrigleyville today. These people seemed to be arguing over something and i was able to get a picture of the emotion on the guy's face.

25.11.14: Prior to retirement, I was an early adopter, and now I watch my $. Pulled the plug today and passed the E-M1 and 12-40 lens onto my wife, an OM shooter from way back. I am now 100% over to Sony in that the replacement will be a RX1 - I expect it to take me back to the days of shooting landscapes with the D700. The A7 Black Friday advertised prices at London Drugs intrigued me, as well as the new A7r in particular, but the Sony lens road map + $ made up my mind. I am very happy with my RX10, RX100M3 and now I will add FF to my kit - no more lens's to carry around and change as required, to say nothing about the weight and inconvenience when traveling, etc.

 

27.11.14: Henry's sent RX1 shipping notice this afternoon so sometime next Thursday via Canada Post 'Expedited' (the MegaGear "Ever Ready" Protective Dark Brown Leather Camera Case and JJC LH-LHP1 Professional Lens Hood via Amazon.ca shipped yesterday may be here tomorrow - the latter must have more pull with Canada Post?). As this is and has been my only hobby for the past 15 years, I have been fortunate enough to buy only new cameras (sealed Box) until now. I would not have made the move on the RX1 due to $, but I came across an un-boxed RX1 @ Henrys. I saved or did not spend an additional $409.00 based on the current Amazon.ca price or $823.00 based on Camera shop prices researched this week. So now I will see what a re-boxed camera looks and works like. I am good at selling my kit used (but in pristine condition), now the shoe is on the other foot :)

 

Did I mention that I already have the FDA-EVIM VF as well as spare batteries (M3)! Just have to now sell some kit for the Nissin i40. On the other hand I rarely use a flash, and this camera is so good in low light, the built-in flash will do in a pinch.

 

28.11.14:

 

www.onemorelens.com/2013/12/how-rx1-made-photographer-out...

 

www.flickr.com/photos/justinwkern/8634159686/

 

Been there, done that re record button...

theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer...

 

www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/sony_rx1r.shtml

 

A good argument for a 5yr Sony extended warranty?

blog.photoshelter.com/2014/02/sony-rx1-review-one-year-la...

 

The MegaGear case was delivered this afternoon. The so called built-in grip looks to me to be too small and slippery due to the leather (will have to consider attaching a small non-slip patch). For $29 it appears to be well built, but we will see how the cam fits in it. Just bought a 600x 64gb sd card from Amazon.ca for $44.

 

www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/sony-rx1/sony-rx1A.HTM

 

duncandavidson.com/gear/sony/rx1/

 

www.gearophile.com/cameras/camera-reviews/sony-rx1.html

 

2.12.14: Canada Post Expedited beat their estimate by 2 days and delivered today, which leaves me with perhaps a day and a half of sunny skies before the rain start again.

 

Unboxed it was, but no signs of use that I could see, and everything in working order so far. First interior low light shots and zoomed-in-camera where impressive in their detail. My wife is usually my first subject with a new camera, and she was not impressed with the detail (too much) :-).

 

3.12.14: Inside most of the day, but got low light interior shots that confirmed numerous reviewer opinions. I shoot raw/jpeg and both shots in some instances appeared to me to have in camera NR applied in excess of the low option ( admittedly pixel peeping) [4.12.14 Checked settings and found Soft Skin Effect on]. I also noticed that the speaker is located at the base of the camera, and if one is using a leather

case as I am, replaying videos may require earbuds. I also found focus hunting sometimes where the M3 and the RX10 might not.

 

5.12.14: The Sony ECM-XYST1M Stereo Microphone (I use it on the RX10) is not supported by this cam.

 

7.12.14: Learning curve for me with this cam, as well in terms of Sony Memory, Display and Function modes. Message on screen re Macro mode on ( while manual focusing ) indicates to me that I will have to be careful in that mode. Tried out Smart Telecon and Zoom ( in JPEG only ) - more than likely not something I will use as I shoot raw. What no WiFi? Forgot this cam is 2012 vintage.

 

Partially cloudy today, so off to shoot some landscapes.

 

8.12.14: The following review by TechnoGut from MetroWest in Massachusetts, pretty much covers my experience with this cam so far:

 

"An absolutely unique photographic tool w/out peer

February 8, 2013

If you managed to get this far through all the reviews of the camera, you're either a glutton for punishment, are you really are a researcher and aficionado of high-end digital photography. Let's assume it's the latter and get to the really interesting stuff.

This camera is in a class of one. There's really nothing like it anywhere in the marketplace. It's absurdly expensive for a point-and-shoot, and yet it takes pictures that rival and in some cases exceed in overall quality what some of the very best full frame pro cameras are capable of generating . . . . . while fitting fairly comfortably in your jacket pocket. It looks like your neighbor's point-and-shoot $350 Canon, but costs more than your last vacation. It doesn't even have a viewfinder, either optical or electronic - although you can get a great electronic one, if you don't mind being soaked for another $450 on top of what you've already shelled out for this absurdly expensive but marvelous piece of technology. Or you can really get hosed completely by Zeiss, and get an optical viewfinder for another $650 - easily the most overpriced accessory in digital photography. It isn't the fastest focusing, and it requires you to move closer or farther to get the shot that you want instead of zooming in or out given the fixed focal length lens. It can be both maddening to use and at the same time . . . a breeze to use like any other point-and-shoot.

It's like nothing else really. Its high ISO performance is equal to anything and I do mean anything out there. It's capable of taking very low noise images at ISO 6400, and with a little bit of cleanup and working in RAW, you can easily salvage high quality pictures at ISO 12,800 with lots of detail and very little loss of information due to noise. Overall, the camera is something of a walking contradiction in terms in many ways, and at the same time, it's a camera that's capable of inspiring enormous loyalty and probably will generate a truly cult-like following, while many other people may simply shake their heads at what they see as Sony's foolishness.

Pros:

1) As good high ISO as virtually any full frame camera (with the possible exception of the Canon 1 Dx, Nikon D4 and D600 - and, at worst, it is very close to those benchmark systems in terms of low light ability - at best it is equal to any of them).

2) Capable of remarkable detail due to its 24 megapixel full frame sensor with excellent color and dynamic range. DxO sensor score of 93.

3) High quality Zeiss 35mm F 2.0 fixed lens that is sharp edge-to-edge (which for FF camera might cost $1200 or so by itself).

4) Intuitive but deep operating system and menu structures, immediately familiar to those coming from Sony Alpha background. Easy to run as full manual camera . . . or put on full AUTO, and all shades in between. Good aperture priority mode operation (my personal fav).

5) Capable of shooting 1080 at 60p and taking excellent videos in low light, and with full IS (image stabilization).

6) Remarkable compactness and portability for such enormous low light capabilities w/full frame sensor - an engineering tour de force in terms of cramming full frame capabilities into a point-and-shoot size and form factor (achievable only with a fixed lens).

7) Macro functionality in CZ lens.

8) Customizable buttons and other nice user config operating system features.

9) Crop/zoom functionality of x1.4 and x2.0 partially mitigates fixed lens restrictions (equivalent to 50 and 70 mm lens but with obvious loss of resolution).

10) High build quality w/ nice magnesium chassis - has very solid feel (it ought to for this much $!).

11) Decent flash.

Cons:

1) Price.

2) Fixed focal length lens means extra work to get the shot properly framed - and forget about shooting subjects at a distance.

3) Tendency to underexpose one half to one third exposure value - why can't Sony for this much money get exposure values locked in?

4) Problems with focus lock in low light - mostly a standard contrast detection focus issue (but for example OM5 does better job). Fixable in firmware updates perhaps?

5) Likelihood of (or at least possibility of) planned obsolescence, as Sony may release a zoom lens version sometime in the next three years.

6) More than disappointing that Sony did not include an electronic viewfinder as standard equipment at this price.

7) Poor thumb grip with not enough contour - not easy to hold onto the camera with one hand.

8) No IS for stills - given that this is always sensor-based in Sony systems, not sure why omitted (hi ISO performance?).

9) Sony STILL hasn't made viewing photos and videos in any kind of alternating fashion easy - must surf menus or shoot video to get easy viewing access to videos on card.

10) Poor battery life. Must carry two batteries.

11) Lens zoom and crop functionality not available if shooting in RAW.

12) Flash has really modest output and no bounce functionality.

Having more cons than pros doesn't mean that I don't like/love this camera. I'm a bit stunned by its capabilities on the one hand, and frustrated with its limitations on the other, but it's obvious that what makes it so remarkable actually locks in some of its limitations. You simply couldn't get this compact form factor with an EVF and even a 3x zoom lens. The lens alone would be huge, and this Zeiss lens itself is an engineering marvel, in terms of how small it really is for a FF sensor 2.0 lens. In the end, it's all about image quality, and here, both in stills and video, there is very little to complain about. And if you take this instead of your huge DSLR and bag of lenses, just because it's so damned convenient, isn't that the strongest endorsement you can make? I find that I am transitioning away from a very favorite Sony A65 as my default camera, just because this is so easy to carry.

I'm still exploring the performance envelope of the RX-1, and will update this review as I go. It's a remarkable camera by any standard, and perhaps the most INTERESTING camera that has been made in the last 10 years, with the possible exception of the SLTs made also by Sony. Suggests that Sony is thinking outside the box and more creatively than anyone else.Hide" [store.sony.com/cyber-shot-rx1]."

 

It says something about this camera, that crossing over from the E-M1 and it's very good IS, I am getting pretty much the same ratio of sharp shots, and I will be 70 next year! The latter does not necessarily mean that my hands are not that steady now, but it is a factor.

 

9.11.14: One thing about accumulating camera bags over the years is that one can sometimes find one that will fit a new cam. In this case I found a roots that will fit the RX1 with the VF attached. When the hood finally arrives, it may not.

 

12.12.14: Finally got some fair weather shooting this morning, as well as some interior grand kid shots. I also revisited some of my D700 shots, I am back to FF and very happy!

 

11.12.14: We know that unlike the M3/M4, the flash will not flip back in order to bounce ( I find this very handy ), I have tried some options and achieved a partial angled bounce, but with a bit too much fiddling. More experimenting.

 

14.12.14: Sony soft skin effect in video face detect mode M3 issues

www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3700520

  

17.12.14: Fotodiox Pro, All Metal Black Camera Hand Grip for Sony DSC-RX1 Cyber-Shot Digital Camera with Battery Access ( speaker covered ) delivered today. Good fit and blends in well. Grip has a smooth surface, I would prefer non-slip.

 

19.12.14: In between showers I went for a walk this morning and shot some landscape and grand-kid shots. A few keepers, but shooting in Program mode and flixible spot (my error) I did not get many in focus. Auto, on the other hand got some good in focus shots of the 2 year olds. This camera has a learning curve for shooters like me, so I had better get with it.

 

20.12.14: The JJC LH-LHP1 Professional Lens Hood for Sony DSC-RX1 Digital Camera Replaces Sony LHP-1 finally arrived today and fits very well. I will check out filter options in the new year (ND and CircPol) in terms of fit and the Sony cap attaching properly. Although some users are of the opinion that using any filters on this lens was not what Sony engineers had in mind. By the way re the hand grip, it may provide access to the battery and SD card, but if I had trouble getting the card out, anyone with bigger hands may not get it out without tweezers of some kind.

 

22.12.14: I gave this cam it's first real workout this evening. We went out to the Butchard Gardens with the grand-kids to take in the Holiday lighting. Right up front, 90% of my shooting is in Program mode - and I am happy with the keepers (in the 70's when I shot with a Pentax Spotmatic we did not have 30000+ algorithms programmed into the camera as they do now). I used a monopod for all shots, alternating between Program mode and Auto/Scene modes. Even though the front dial was set at AF, I had trouble with the cam going into TRACKING FOCUS mode (Auto and Scene), and by the time I figured it out ( it is dark, lots of lighting and scenery, and grand-kids and their parents getting lost in the crowds) many of my shots were out of focus. Focusing with this cam in poor lighting conditions is a problem for me so far, in that both the M3 and RX10 are better in that department. The difference between sensors (M3 and RX1) is very noticeable shooting in the dark as I was, and those shots that were in focus were very good 6400 ISO, less so at 25,000 ISO ( as Auto and Scene seem to default to ). Also, battery power lasted less than two hours or about 200 shots, and I had two extra with me just in case.

 

24.12.14: Took a gamble that the Larmor LCD Screen Protector for the RX100 series would fit on both this camera and the RX10. Applied today, no problem.

 

27.12.14: Upland Park Garry Oak Eco System.

First hour of good weather outing with the RX1 (weather systems were coming in hard and fast). Finally, some landscape shooting with this FF camera! No problems with focusing, although I had to adapt when shooting the kids, but still got a good percentage of keepers. Blown away by this sensor and the camera's portability (compared to the D700 or E-M1).

 

29.12.14: After reviewing my first RX1 posted shots, I have decided that to do the camera justice, I should upload a larger file than I usually do. Limited to a fixed lens I have to plan the shot in terms of distance and what it is I want to capture. Not a problem with the M3 or RX10, but something that I will have to keep in mind for my travels.

 

5.01.15: Ended up buying a 49mm circ Pol from Sony Store (15% off re purchase of RX1) and had to pick it up from Purolator today (not impressed with Sony's so called tracking option).

 

A first time for me, I decided to take one RX1 shot a day for this year, if for no other reason than the project will push me to learn the camera, as well as think about shots other than landscapes, seascapes or macros.

 

9.01.15: Last night I was tempted to take the E-M1 to shoot our twin grand-daughter's 2nd birthday and all the mayhem that entails, but opted for the RX1 and the Rx100M3. I stuck with the RX1 and used the Spd Priority Cont mode (Focus and exposure fixed from the first shot - I should have remembered the latter) and face Detection on, for the most part. The E-M1 would have done far better with respect to focusing, but less so with noise. The RX1 in program mode shot mostly at 6400 with some 3200 shots. Had the focusing been up to par I would have had many keepers, as it is, there were more than enough to keep me happy. The M3 was used for a few shots because the focusing was faster.

 

Processing the above shots (as well as previous shoots) in Capture One 8 I (switched from both Aperture 3.6 and LR 5.0) I found all indoor shots warmer than I like, but other than that, speedier rendition than with both the other options, and not much more processing required.

 

19.01.14: Yesterday we had a series of heavy rain and wind (up 95k gusts) storms pass through our area, but our kids held a birthday picnic at a local secluded park for their twins 2 year olds anyway. We showed up, my wife with the E-M1 and I had the RX2. E-M1 when raining and the RX1 when not. Although slower in focusing, I had some keepers of parents trying to get the toddlers organized for a group photo, and the toddlers on their own as a group.

 

29.01.15: Interesting re switching from Aperture to C1:

www.phaseone.com/Imaging-Software/Capture-One/Testimonial...

 

30.01.15: Catching up with backing up cards. With the video which is found in the Private file, I use Aunsoft Panasonic AVCHD Convertor Pro to convert and/or merge. This is where I find that issue with the location of the record button is a problem for me. About half of the clips were due to my thumb hitting the record button - solved in the menu by assigning to the movie mode only option.

 

2.03.15: 2.03.15: So that now that I can travel camera 'light' (RX100M3, RX1 and/or RX10) I am preparing for a trip next month. I have traveled the area in question several times, and photo ops, at least for me, will be far fewer, unless I am testing the cams vs the E-M1+12-40mm/f2.8 and XZ-2 combo last time. I should be taking only one, but the RX100M3 and RX1 would do just fine, but the RX10 with it's zoom would also come in handy. Decisions, decision......

 

7.04.15: RX1 and RX100m3 it will be.

 

4.05.15: Finally back with a nasty case of bronchitis (which I attribute to the passengers getting on in San Diego for a 4 day cruise to Vancouver). The RX1 was with me most of the time while on shore except for snorkelling or what I considered not to secure areas. For instance we took a tour to La Antigua Guatemala and I had the RX1. RX100M3 and iPhone6+. High noon sun, but that is the way these tours off of cruise ships work of necessity. Back on board shots were reviewed on my iPad Air 2 and cards backed up to a small portable HD. I found the iPhone 6+ to be on me most of the time, while post processing and uploading to Flickr was a lark. Back home, I now get to review 3 weeks worth of shots.

 

My wife opted to take my RX10 instead of the OMD-E-M1 , and I think that will become permanent. I missed the versatility of the RX10 for travelling, so if a RX20 shows up, I guess the E-M1 is on it's way out.

 

14.05.15: One complaint from wife, which I heard often, was the slow zoom, so it appears that am getting the RX10 back and she will stick with the E-M1.

 

14.06.15: While travelling I found that I posted most shots to Flickr from the iPhone 6+ and a few RX1 shots from the iPad.

 

Most of my shooting was done with the RX1 (with VF) and the 100m3 for long shots. Although, an RX1 crop was pretty near the equivalent IMO. I have just about completed this trip's culling and PP. Am I happy to be back agin into FF shooting!

 

The short of it for me is: The RX1 for most of my type of shooting, the RX100M3 for interiors and for pocket only, and the RX10 for all around shooting ( although no where near as fast and stabilized as the E-M1 - I rarely need either option).

 

6.08.15: www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3847564.

 

3.10.15: Ordered the Nissan i40 Flash from B&H the last day before they closed for a week, so no delivery until around the 14th.

 

7.10.15: Shipped today.

 

15.10.15: i40 received today, charging batteries (contrary to what I read in a forum it does take rechargeable batteries).

Initial impression: just the size I would want for this cam and the RX10M2, swivel and bounce options, in one very compact 4 battery unit. However, I would not care to drop it, or remove it out of the shoe other than gently.

 

24.12.15: I do not often use a flash, but usually do at family gatherings, and did at last few this season (so far). This cam, for me, is more suited for my landscape and portrait photography than for these gatherings. The RX1`00M4 has proven to be the best so far (although I plan to try out the RX10M2 and flash today).

 

1.01.16: Found a Roots (CSC System) bag on sale @ London Drugs which fit this cam, the VF and the Nissin i40, along with pockets (albeit tight) for cards,extra battery and circ polarizer.

 

25.04.16: Early Spring with warmer than normal temps and travel plans. Have not made up my mind on what cams I will be taking to Alaska (7 day cruise). The RX10M2 would seem to be ideal, but so would the RX1 along with the 100m4. The vagaries of the weather (as experienced on previous trips) means that the DMZ-TS5 will be in my pocket. I can take more than one cam as flying is not necessary :). Ditto when RVing in B.C and Alberta.

 

3.06.16: Reviewing shots taken with this cam and the RX100M4. RX1 Landscapes and portraits really stand out (not surprisingly) when compared to the M4 (the latter is no slouch though).

 

vimeo.com/116692462

 

8.07.16: One decent rose in my garden, and I had to compare shots with the RX10M3. Although not in the same league as my long since sold macro lenses, I am happy with both shots.

 

15.01.17: A note the bags I am using with this cam:

1. Roots RHM 090: Tight but will fit the camera, VF, i40 flash, 2 filters and two cards. Tight for the sling strap ( have a smaller sling strap for this cam and a larger sling for the RX10m3). Again the straps that come with this bag are easy to change over.

2. Roots 73: Will fit the camera and VF along with a hand strap. No space for my sling strap, but the roots bag strap is easy to unclip and clip on to split key rings.

 

22.02.17: For backpacking I have a Optech USA soft pouch which will fit both the camera and VF.

 

Sample shots @:

Sony DSC-RX1 - My Notes + sample shots @ :

www.flickr.com/photos/om44pomch9/albums/72157649062166708...

 

16.09.18: Debating wether or not to sell this cam and upgrade to the a7iii with a 24-105 f/4 lens. I find that, at my age, I have to use a tripod most of the time (while I have the RX10M4 hanging off my shoulder/neck). The two together weigh more than the new combo by my calculations. We shall see, later than sooner, as the pre-orders lists are lengthy.

 

24.09.18: RX1 for sale and the A7RIII + 55 f1.8 has been shipped.

 

25.09.18: I may try to convince my wife to use this camera.

 

30.09.18: A7Riii returned along with the 55mm f/1.8.

Going in I was aware of the large files, but not to the extent it would slow down my workflow. Really liked the VF and LCD. Now waiting for the A7III and 24-105mm f/4.0. For now I will keep the RX1 with it's fixed 35mm f/2.0 - lens alone is worth the resale value of the RX1.

 

4.10.17: Opted for great glass Sony 35mm f1.4 and A7ii ($1,100.00 savings over A7iii). Selling RX1 + kit.

 

11.02.19: Kept the RX1 for its 2.0 lens, Full Frame and it is unobtrusive.

 

Processing: Changed from Aperture to Lightroom 6 and then to Capture One( several years before their conversion to the 'Cloud' as Sony colours and processing were/was better in my opinion). C1's annual upgrade fee doubled in the last year so I opted for Capture One Sony instead. I have copies of both Luminar 3 (I prefer the latter to ON1, and ON1 (I really thought that ON1 would replace Lightroom for me), but Raw shots had colour fringing while the otter apps did not, so I am sticking with C1 Sony for my Catalog, while processing as needed with Luminar 3 and Aurora 19 (more so than with Topaz).

 

www.flickr.com/photos/justinwkern/11593358096/in/photolis...

 

28.07.19: Decision time fast approaching, whether to travel ( by air & sea ) with the ILCE-7M2 & 24-105 (f/4.0 - heavy) or the RX1 [f/2.0 - light] - ( along with the RX100V [24-70 f/1.8] & iPhone Xs Max [f/1.8) + Moment 18mm lens. Either way both cams have Peak Design straps, as well, I will attach a Peak Design Cuff.

 

17.08.19: After much back and forth, settled on less weight and bulk. RX1 it is for this trip.

 

15.09.19: Regreted somewhat not taking the ILCE-7M2. The RX1 viewfinder kept falling off in crowded conditions, tour buses, security etc..

 

8.09.20: Camped up island over the long labour day weekend. I wavered between traveling with the new (for me) iPhone 11 Max Pro + Moment lenses alone or also with the RX1. The RX1 won out, and did not disappoint (as usual). Processed the latter's shots first, and now the iPhone will be reviewed.

 

20.01.22: Planning to RV this year (the Island, B.C. Interior and Alberta's National Parks. My planned kit will be the Tamron 70-300, RX1, and the 24-100. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is always with me.

 

Sony version updates, nowhere near as convenient as Olympus - IMO. RX1 remains on version 1.0. Tried to update the ILCE-7M3, and the roadblock this time, is the latest Apple Mac OS Monterey. Wonder how long it will take them to update?

 

27.03.22: Updated. Next RX 1 & any lens updates.

 

Lens creep: re-reading some of me earlier notes - RX 1 solo & no other lenses required. Well that did not last long did it!

Lilburn Georgia, January 2011

7DOS, Week #3 - About Me, Abstract Thursday - Another one from my (recent) archives and again taken for an ODC challenge.

 

I had an idea in mind, but the execution was too time-consuming considering we're on holiday, and so decided to use this as it represents complexity in some ways. Like my fellow 7DOS member, Sue www.flickr.com/photos/suerobertsnl/ , I am an eternal ex-pat. I don't live in my country of origin and have spent more years living in one foreign culture after the other than I can keep track of these days. It's exciting, but it always requires more effort than you imagine, looking in from the outside, as you have to work to get to know a place, deal with local beauracracy, make friends and adapt to (and even adopt) aspects of the place that is home-for-now, only to have to move on again after a period of time. This is an accident of fate rather than a consciously made decision, on my part at any rate, although there is the argument that nothing is an accident and that our choices determine where we go and what we do in our lives, even if we're not consciously deciding at the time.

I have lived in 7 countries and visited many more, although I've not yet made it to Asia or the USA. I speak 2 languages fluently and 2 more to a functional level (and have picked up and forgotten 2 others along the way). Our little family of Nomads is what is known as a third culture family: typically this is a situation where the parents are from one culture, the child/children are born in another and the family, as a rule, live in a third; in our case, we were all born in different countries and have lived in many more since LG was born 9 years ago.

The list goes on and on… it is an experience that offers us many wonderful and unique experiences, as well as regular challenges. We are fortunate in that it gives us the chance to properly experience cultures different to our own, but at the same time we are increasingly rootless; the inevitable social question "So, where are you from?" is a one for which Mr Nomad and I have a short, cut-off-questions-before-they-start answer and a longer you-really-want-to-know? answer :-) One of the reasons, by the way, that we return to Italy for our summer break is that it's the place in which we've spent the most time as a family and where each of us feels most at home.

 

ODC - Light It Up Blue (originally shot for this challenge in April 2014)

 

Part of a massive chandelier in a local shopping mall - seemed apt for today's challenge set by Laurama www.flickr.com/photos/47181226@N05/ in aid of Light It Up Blue - "… a worldwide movement with a mission to raise awareness for autism. April 2 is a World Autism Day and continues through the month of April. Many iconic landmarks, hotels, sporting venues, museums, bridges and stores will participate by lighting up with blue lights. I know the Empire State Building in New York City will be lit blue for this cause. If there are any places local to you participating in Light it up Blue you may be able to capture these lights."

 

You can also find me at www.facebook.com/LyndaHPhotography

I will give a few arguments ✅ FOR.

📍Photography increases self-esteem, helps to gain self-confidence, psychologically unload, overcome complexes and tightness

📍Thanks to the pictures, a person learns to feel himself both internally and from the outside, photography allows you to show yourself and your individuality

📍There are moments that will never happen again: a wedding, the birth of children, graduation… How nice it will be to remember the vivid emotions from these events years later

📍If you are advertising a brand or product, then a photo is the main tool for attracting attention

⠀

📣 What other advantages are there?

Write comments, add to the list.

⠀

#photoshootmoscow #newyearsphotoshootmoscow #fotografnameropriytie #fotodenmoscow #NikonD800 #safronoviv_photo

Oh boy. Last minute I was nearly possessed by some thick, black spikes that nearly hurt my lungs. Now this. How long is this argument gonna be? Technically I’m the one with anger issues, not because I’m a dwarf, but I have them.

 

Sean: “You put a fucking tracker to me, Flor? What is that all about?”

Florence: “Keeping an eye out. I dragged Callan all the way from Sheffield to here. But he doesn’t know a damn thing.”

Callan: “My family’s fucking dead, alright, peace out. But if it wasn’t for your teammate Strymir, I’ve seen better Scandinavians who have a better oath to keep than your puny little shitholes.”

Luc: “Are you calling me out on my friend? Just because you’re rich, doesn’t give you that right, you wanker.”

Callan: “Well try me then, you cunt.”

 

Terry: “Hey guys, I…well, everyone, shut the fuck up. Shouldn’t we be going after some lost book? I really don’t need both teams arguing at the same time.

Edris: “I don’t get all this mess I signed up for right now. I just lost my teacher—our closest teammate and why the fuck are we still around the Louvre?

Luc: “…”

Sean: “She’s right. I just lost my friend to these fucking shenanigans. If I weren’t up for this job, I would still be prosecuting people for shit.”

Callan: “Would he be deemed guilty?”

Sean: “Can’t let my personal feelings get in the way considered my lady is in their hands…but fuck this, we’ll talk about the rest later, Florence. Now let’s go.”

 

***

 

Luc’s group teleportation ability worked like a charm. Didn’t mean it like a pun, but sure. Magnus disabled it right the amulets when he left. My head’s really fizzy from the the last “Serpent” fucker who tried to…take control. The experience was awful, or else I would have gutted him with the axe when I could move.

 

This is already the 50th painting of the Mona Lisa hung on the Louvre, the original is still somewhere. No time to clean up messes even if I’m a good builder from my genes. But a book is a book, this Malison…it feels like a series. I’ve been asked in the past to polish and make changes to keep the book from deteriorating, but now I kinda regret it—

 

Prez: “The skies are getting even darker. We’re reaching eclipse soon, very soon. I believe the Pont des Arts is going to be overtaken by demons any minute.”

Terry: “Any indication of whatever the hell these demons come from?”

Luc: “Theoretically, I don’t know. They seem mutated. Sean, can you confirm?”

Sean: “Guess so...the needles didn’t look very unnatural. Let’s split up.”

Edris: “We can’t, can we?”

Luc: “Not likely. We stick together right fucking now, ok?

Florence: “Also gimme a moment lads, lemme try finding out what the old man knows…him and Forge

Everyone: “Aight.”

 

While Florence is busy on comms, the others help load up her car with tons of weapons that I presume it can be used later since we did waste a lot of ammo. I’ve had a quick chat with her on blacksmiths and crafting, which she is fond of. Now we’re both on the law with a former officer, ironic. I bet it would even be terrible considering there is no organization we can reach right now. The one in Germany is slaughtered, Asia…fallen, America…same.

 

It isn’t long until the streets are rampant with fire again, by the sudden wave of demons who reach up from both sides as we are still prepping. I grab my rifle and start shooting at three coming at my 7, while my right hand grabs the axe and slices a crawler that nearly tried to latch onto my face.

 

Florence: “They think we’re here for the book! We have to go right now! These weapons are best saved later.”

Edris: “What do you have, a fairy killer?”

Florence: “No, it’d be too big for a doomsday device—I tailored the cannon. Like a fucking sea pirate.”

Prez: “Goddamn.”

 

With no time to waste besides on admiring on her crafting for a second, she grabs a rocket launcher from the trunk, as she casts a spell that translates to “rage” in Latin, and fires it directly into the ugly bunch, second wave. Luc helps with casting a mist so that we could escape to the roof. Sean climbs throws a couple of enchanted knives at a couple heads before it gets redirected back at him.

 

I shoot a couple more rounds along with my axe, since it does fit with the rifle. A great modpon.

 

Edris: “The dust ain’t gonna hold off longer…and neither will Terry, we’re gonna be drained by the end of the day…is it gonna start, Callan?”

Callan: “Yes I’m working on it…”

Prez: “Get it done, now!”

Callan: “Alright…here we go…the coordinates are good thanks to you Cap’n…boom!”

 

And with a quick flash, we all disappear along with the Aston Martin before the demons can even reach us, with my head only remembering dropping one of my grenades for the demon army.

It was taken in an early morning under a bridge, inside a flower market of Howrah, India, the biggest flower market in Asia. This place had a good light here. So, I waited for pictures with some of my friends. While taking a few, I found myself in front of two people having some arguments over some matter and they did not notice me at all, I guess. I found the scene intriguing with the person in foreground in dark and how it was directing naturally towards the person in the middle and I liked the other person’s expression even more. I placed myself quietly towards them and clicked one photograph and left the spot almost immediately and stood at a distance! It was quite fun for me as well as challenging regarding their reaction if they spotted me!

A mature and an immature Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) have an aerial argument over the shores of Neets Bay, Alaska during the annual salmon spawning run.